I hear it as I turn the corner, dazzled by the canal blazing gold in the setting sun. At first I think it’s the shriek of brakes and I take a pull on my vape, savouring the taste, the little head rush, and look around, searching for the source. It comes again, only louder, clearer, a long soprano note swooping through the air before sliding down to a choked-off finish. This time I work out what it is. It’s a scream.
I’d been out at the lock-up working on the Mustang and decided to get off the train two stops earlier, walk back to my houseboat through the canal district. Sure, it’ll take me twenty minutes or so longer, and I’ll have to contend with all the tourists, many of them in Halloween gear, but I could do with the walk. And anyway, I’ve been an Amsterdammer all my life, I don’t even see tourists any more. Except when they wind up dead and it’s my job to step in and sort it out.
Was, I remind myself. Was my job.
And now this, a man, less than thirty metres away, with his hand round a woman’s throat. She tries to scream again, though this time it’s quickly muffled as his grip tightens. I start forward, taking another hit from the vape before sliding it into my pocket.
The woman tries to wriggle free. They’re face to face now, arms flailing like fighting crabs, and she shifts round into profile. For a split second I think it’s Tanya – her hair the same shade of red, held up in a ponytail with the exact same bounce – and a deep sadness washes over me as I relive in a single moment all that went wrong between us.
Another cry snaps me out of it. The man grabs the woman’s hair, jerks her head back and starts whispering in her ear. They’re by a cluster of shiny metal tables. Steps behind them lead down into a bar, the glass doors of which are crammed with Halloweened faces peering out. I note that none of them are rushing to get involved.
‘Hey! Let her go!’ I call out when I’m close enough.
‘Fuck off,’ he says without even turning round to see who it is. He’s wearing a grey suit, his tie loosened, the top buttons on his shirt undone, tails hanging loose. He sticks his pale tongue in her ear where it darts and writhes like a hungry, slippery eel. The woman’s trying her best to fight him off, but he’s bigger and stronger than her and she just can’t break free.
I reach them and swing my arm out round his throat, hauling him back hard. He tries to fight but I just tighten even further, closing off his airway. A few more seconds of that and he can see he’s not going to win. He stops struggling and releases her, though I can feel he’s still tense, still amped up. The woman stumbles away, hands at her throat, each gasp for air a saw through wood. A couple of spectators, finally deciding it’s safe enough, stream out of the bar towards her. He’s dressed in a skeleton suit. She’s got yellow skin with a cobweb creeping across her face. They flank her and all three move down the steps.
‘I’ll release you,’ I tell him once they’re safely inside. ‘Don’t make me regret it.’
‘All right,’ he says, voice tight and breathy. ‘All right.’
I loosen my arm, allowing him some air. But he’s quick, one step ahead of me, and he stamps down hard. My left foot explodes with pain as he slithers out of my hold, grabs a bottle off one of the zinc-topped tables and smashes it on the edge. I try to duck as he spins round but the bite of jagged glass lights up my arm. The black wolf shudders. I stagger left and he takes advantage, charging me like a bull. I’ve no time to dodge and he rams his shoulder into my stomach. It knocks the wind out of me and still he keeps on coming, feet slipping and skidding until my heel catches a ridge at the top of the steps. Then there’s weightlessness and pit-of-the-stomach fear as I’m launched backwards into space. He starts to run away as I fall, gritty footsteps receding fast as I hit the ground hard. My hip and shoulder take the brunt of it. My head whiplashes down.
By the time I scramble up, the shock of the impact still reverberating through my body, the wound in my arm pulsing and the rush of blood loud in my ears, I can see he’s long gone.
I’m sat in one of the bar’s semicircular booths staring at the shard of glass in my arm when two uniforms finally saunter onto the scene, closely followed by a paramedic. A muted trumpet melody haunts the space and the air is warm with exhaled alcohol. I move and light flashes across the surface of the glass. It’s got an elegant shape, curved like a sail catching the wind. Or a fang. I reach out to grasp it.
‘Don’t,’ calls the paramedic, striding towards me with a kitbag. He’s young, sleeves rolled up, and has the air of a man who can deal with a situation. He snaps on some gloves, does a quick visual.
‘Nasty,’ he says. ‘Looks like it’s gone deep. Should probably get you to a hospital.’
It’s that soft time between afternoon and evening, and I’m pretty sure the wound isn’t life-threatening. Meaning I’ll be back of the queue at A & E, most likely oversubscribed because it’s Halloween and people have started drinking early, despite the fact it’s a Wednesday. Do I want to spend hours under fluorescent lights waiting for my name to be called, surrounded by sick people and relatives desperately hoping for the surgeon to stride out and tell them everything’s going to be okay? Or by drunk people sobering up after their friend got so roaringly drunk they’d put their head through a shop window and were right now being stitched up so their face will be a permanent reminder of Halloween?
‘Can’t you just pull it?’ I ask as he’s about to make the call.
‘Problem is, if it’s hit the brachial artery and I pull it out then you will bleed.’
His radio bursts on, a priority-one request for another incident not far from here. I know priority one is only used for injuries deemed potentially fatal if not treated swiftly.
‘That sounds more urgent. Just pull it. I’ll be fine.’
He frowns, but allows his eyes and fingers to rove, assessing damage, checking angles of entry and possible exit.
‘Squeamish?’ he asks.
‘No.’
He reaches into his bag and pulls out a miniature torch, then pinches a bit of flesh, opening up the side of the wound to see how deep the glass goes. I glance down into all that glistening pinky moistness. Well, maybe I am a little squeamish after all.
‘I dunno …’ he says, clicking the torch off and stowing it away.
He looks at me and checks the shard again, frowning to himself whilst probing round it gently. His hair’s close cropped with a widow’s peak pointing to an oddly flat nose. He’s also drenched in a strong aftershave which is giving me a headache. Or maybe that’s from the fall.
‘Honestly I’d be happier taking you in. I don’t want a bleeder.’
‘Just do it,’ I tell him.
The paramedic weighs it all up for a moment then nods. ‘You just can’t help some people,’ he says with a shrug.
He starts assembling what he needs and I take a moment to look around. The place was full when I’d been helped in by the barman, but most of the people have cleared out, not wanting their evening to be disrupted with answering tedious questions posed to them by the police. Major buzzkill when all you’d wanted to do was leave the stresses and strains of the day behind you and party into the night as if morning’s never coming round again.
The only people left now are the woman, the barman and the manager who’d come down from the office upstairs, wringing his hands and fussing like an old woman with unexpected guests. Further afield severed heads, crooked-winged bats with glowing eyes and alien autopsy jars hang from the ceiling. Filaments glow dimly in oversized bulbous glass retro bulbs imitating the Edison originals. I find myself staring at one.
‘Hey, second thoughts?’
‘Ready,’ I say. A ghost of the filament stays with my eyeballs, merging two realities into one. It dances as I watch him pinch the shard delicately between thumb and forefinger, the blue gloves wrinkled as if they’re just a bit too big for him. He gives it a little wobble first, just checking how well embedded it really is. Pain shoots right up my arm and into my neck. He catches my eye and nods. I nod back and blow air out of my mouth three times in quick succession. On the third he yanks it out. Blood wells up in the shard’s wake. The sting’s sharper than I’d thought it would be.
He’s quick, lost in the flow of work, and soon has a folded swab pressed hard against the wound, which he asks me to take charge of. After thirty seconds or so he checks it, gives a satisfied nod, and sprays the cut.
‘Not a bleeder,’ I say, more relieved than victorious.
‘Lucky for you,’ he says, dressing it. ‘Seriously, though, me? I’d want it stitched.’ He packs up swiftly and dashes off.
The uniform taking the woman’s statement finishes up and walks over with his hands in his belt like he’s John Wayne. Typical patrol. Overinflated sense of self-importance. He asks for my details.
‘Inspector Jaap Rykel?’ he asks when I give him my name.
I think of the letter in my pocket.
It’d come earlier in the week, forwarded by my lawyer, Pieter Roskam. I’ve still not signed it. Every time I go to pick up a pen I find something better to do. I’ve been carrying it around for days now, hoping that maybe I could somehow sneak up on myself and sign it whilst I wasn’t paying attention. So far I’ve not managed.
‘Used to be.’
‘Right.’ The uniform nods. ‘Thought I recognized you. You worked with Inspector Jansen for a bit, didn’t you?’
‘How’s he doing?’
‘Seven shades of hell I think. He’s on that big case, the Marianne Kleine murder? Pretty nasty from what I’ve heard.’
He says it like I should know who Marianne Kleine is, and maybe I should, but I don’t follow the news. Part of my treatment plan is to avoid triggers wherever possible. And the news is definitely a trigger. Despite that, I find I’m about to ask him, and catch myself just in time. I’m done with all that, I tell myself. None of my business now. I need to focus on me, getting better, getting away from everything that screwed me over in the first place.
I give him my statement, and then ask about the woman perched on a bar stool. She’s in tight jeans which show off the curves of her legs, and a loose black top, which has slipped down, exposing a creamy, freckled shoulder. A glass of water stands untouched by her elbow. She shifts in her seat and pulls the top back up, as if she can feel our eyes on her.
‘Bit shaken up, but okay. Knows the guy apparently, had trouble with him before. Sounds stalker-like if you ask me, but she says she’s not pressing charges.’
‘What’s her name?’
‘Sabine Wester.’
I look across at her. It’s easy to see why I thought she was Tanya, even if it was only for a brief moment. It’s been over a year, but from the sting of it you’d think it was yesterday, and clearly the mere thought of Tanya is another trigger of mine.
‘I’ll talk to her,’ I say.
He snaps his pocket book closed. ‘Knock yourself out.’
She turns to look at me as I slide onto the stool next to her. Blue eyes, not green, I find myself thinking.
‘Hey,’ she says. ‘Thanks.’
Her voice is smoky going on hoarse, probably an after-effect of the screaming and the hand clamped across her throat. She gives a little cough, reaches for the glass and takes a sip.
‘You’re welcome.’ The wound in my arm throbs like someone’s just turned the pain dial right up. ‘You know the guy?’
Sabine winces and looks away. Her top slips over her shoulder again. She pulls it back up. ‘Sadly I do,’ she says, turning back to look right at me. ‘What you might call one of life’s mistakes.’
‘Let me guess, he doesn’t see it that way?’
‘Something like that.’
She picks up a beer mat. On it a grinning white squid wraps its tentacles round a glass of foaming dark beer. She turns it over and over, hitting it against the bar and sliding her fingers down before flipping it and starting again. Bruises are already starting to form on her neck. By tomorrow they’re going to be very visible.
And I’ve seen all this before. Enough times to know how it usually ends. The muted trumpet breathes its last. The piece segues into a more upbeat sax number.
‘You need to press charges, stop him doing it again.’
She’s still working the beer mat. ‘He showed up outside my flat the other day so I called the police. You know what they said?’
I can probably guess. Truth is we, they, only have limited powers until a crime has actually been committed. Unless there was a restraining order and the man had breached it, there’d be little they could do.
‘I was told to stay inside,’ she says. ‘They didn’t even send anyone. So I press charges against him? He’s only going to get more angry. And it’s not like he’ll be locked away forever.’
Realistically he would probably only get community service. I don’t tell her this.
‘Where do you live?’ I ask just as someone, presumably the barman, cuts the music. My voice booms in the sudden silence.
She glances up. For a moment my surroundings blur away and I experience an internal, expansive whirl I’ve not felt for a long time. I wonder if she felt it too. I guess I’m hoping she did, though I’m not sure I can see any sign of it.
‘On Nassaukade,’ she says. ‘By the park?’
I take the beer mat off her, borrow a pen from the uniform now talking to the manager, who is still wringing his hands. If he carries on like that he’s not going to have any skin left. I write on the mat, along one of the straighter tentacles.
‘You see him again? Call me.’
I tap the mat, turn and walk out. Not a bad exit if I say so myself. For some reason I hope Sabine was impressed. I get that giddy little whirl again.
It’s dark now, colourful lights streak across the canal’s black surface, and I stand for a moment breathing in the city I know so well. The city that made me.
And then tried its best to break me.
The earlier warmth left with the sun. A shudder trembles my spine.
I pull the hood over my head with my good arm and slip off into the neon night.
Just before I reach Bloemgracht, the canal where my houseboat is moored, I pass a newsagent’s board screaming the headline ‘No leads in Marianne Kleine case’. Inside I pick up a copy of De Telegraaf and take it to the counter.
‘Anything else?’ The bored guy’s question brings me back to myself. What am I doing?
‘Uhhh … no. Actually I don’t need this either.’
A bell tinkles as I open the door and leave. I’m shaken, but also pleased I didn’t fall back into the trap. These days I have to celebrate the small victories. I turn off Prinsengracht and my houseboat swings into view. I stop for a moment and admire it.
In its day it hauled freight, coal I’m guessing, until a fire in the mid-sixties took out a large part of the upper deck. Headed for the scrapheap, or whatever the marine equivalent is, someone snapped it up at the last minute and repurposed it as a houseboat. They rebuilt the deck and reconfigured the inside into liveable space. I bought it eleven years ago, just when my career in the police was really taking off and it seemed like the future had open arms.
Now, standing here remembering the past, I think of the letter in my pocket. My current future. Which doesn’t seem like much of a future at all.
The gangplank sways and creaks underneath me. Odd. I notice the motion sensor light above the door hasn’t come on. I reach up and wave my hand. Nothing. I tap it a few times. Darkness reigns.
The lock yields to the key and I’m trying to remember if I’ve got a replacement bulb somewhere. I step inside and flip the switch on the wall. No light here either. The circuit board’s tucked at the back of a cupboard in the old engine room and I follow my phone’s light through the houseboat right to it. The board itself is a mystery. I start randomly flipping switches in the hope something will work. It doesn’t. I should really be able to do something like this myself, go the DIY route, but whenever I try that sort of thing I step into a parallel world where I’m Wile E. Coyote and everything I touch is made by ACME. And in this case I’d be dealing with live electricity, so on balance I decide the situation warrants a professional. Which is going to cost. I think of the letter, the offer they’ve made. Truth is I could use it. But by signing I’d be out forever, with no chance of going back.
As I exit the utility cupboard my shoulder knocks something off a shelf. Illuminated in the phone’s beam is a round tin, with the most kitsch hand-painted Virgin Mary you’ve ever seen. Added to that, the painter wasn’t actually that skilled; an unfortunate smudge makes it look like the Virgin Mary has a moustache. I pick it up, remembering the day Tanya and I bought it out at the flea market at Waterlooplein. It was one of those spontaneous purchases you make when you’re high on another person; at the time we thought it was hilarious, but in the end it was just a stupid tin which never had any use and quickly got lost in everyday life.
Now, though, it reminds me of it all, of how it ended between us and I start to feel the deep pull of loss and regret. I think back to that night, to the things I had to do to keep her safe, and which meant that in the end I lost her.
I shove the gun right into his face. The barrel pushes his lip up.
The flashback’s brief, a split second, but still so disorientating. And I know that it might return at any moment. I stumble back into the main area, reaching for my sealed glass stash jar on the shelves behind the sofa. They are ferocious beasts, the flashbacks, and the only thing that even has a hope of taming them is cannabis.
Inside the jar there’s only a single nug left, a rare strain called Sour Hound which I got from Joel. I break up the sticky bud with shaky fingers and put it in the grinder, twist it, then load up the vaporizer with the ground herb. It’s taking an age to heat up. I find myself staring at the red light, willing it to turn green. C’mon, c’mon. I feel the deep, sucking groundswell telling me there’s another one coming. The space is closing in around me. I’m having trouble breathing. For some reason I can feel the back of my neck more than anything else. My arms feel four times too long. I wonder if I’m going to throw up.
The light turns green and I inhale fast, pulling the vapour deep into my lungs.
I caught it in time. It’s five minutes or so later and I’m melting into the rug, my back against the sofa. From my shifted perspective the flashback seems inconsequential, not something that should hold any power over me. And yet at the time they grab you and don’t let go. They’re part of the condition I’ve been diagnosed with, Uncomplicated PTSD, and they seem more real than real itself. And what’s so scary is the speed; it’s like a switch’s been flipped, changing the channel of your world. There’s no way of telling how long it’s going to last either. It could be seconds, it could be minutes. The worst episode happened mid-afternoon, just as I was leaving my therapist’s office; by the time the switch flipped back it was dark and I was halfway across town slumped behind a row of dumpsters with no memory of how I got there, a large scratch running down my left calf.
Now I’m just grateful the cannabis has worked, and I become fascinated with ripples on the water, visible through the large pane of glass running along the entire living area. They’re tinged with the street lights’ glow, and appear random at first, but if you really watch them you start to see there is a pattern; it’s just hard to work out exactly what it is. I get caught up in them for a while before realizing I’m settling in nicely, time relaxing its frantic grip as I slide into the everlasting present, and the thought of food is just emerging when my phone lights up the ceiling. The number on it is one I know well, the station. My old station. I don’t want to take it, but call it force of habit.
‘Yeah?’
‘Sir? It’s Arno Jansen. Heard you’ve turned into a vigilante.’
Inspector Arno Jansen, closest thing I ever had to a protégé. Before I was forced to knock him out with a rock in a quarry just outside Amsterdam. I’m not sure he’s ever forgiven me for that, even though he knew it was done at the behest of a psychotic killer who was holding Tanya hostage and would have killed her if I didn’t follow his orders.
‘Just a bit of fun. Haven’t beaten anyone up for a while.’
‘Well, glad you weren’t hurt too badly.’
I take another pull from the vape. ‘How’s things?’ I ask after exhaling.
‘Well … been meaning to call you actually. Wondering if you can help me with something?’
‘If it’s itchy, I’d see a doctor. Better safe than sorry.’
‘The old ones are always the best, sir.’
Truth is, I’ve hardly spoken to anyone in months. Since the diagnosis I’ve been doing my best to get better, but I learnt early on that being around other people wasn’t helping. Now I’m starting to see the result of shielding myself, walling myself off from the world. And yet it’s worked. I’m better now than I’ve been at any other time since I was diagnosed. Better, but still not fully there. And I don’t need anything to knock me back. Which is why I’m starting to feel nervous about this call.
‘So what is it then?’ I ask.
‘I’ve just been helping out Marit De Jong. He arrested someone earlier who he thinks is the guy who broke into a Rashid Benkirane’s coffee place, stole a machine and beat the owner up. Apparently Rashid’s a friend of yours?’
‘You’ve got the guy?’
‘Marit did. Been trying to get hold of Rashid but his phone’s off. I believe you helped him when he made the original report and I was wondering if you knew where he was. You live right by him, don’t you?’
I get up and step over to one of the windows. Rashid lives above his business just across the canal and I can see lights on in the two-room apartment.
‘Looks like he’s around.’
‘Don’t suppose you could nip over there, pass the message on? Maybe even bring him in if he is?’
‘Is it really that urgent?’
‘Kinda is. I’m up against it at the moment. Big murder case and I’m only on this as one of Marit’s kids was taken to hospital, and we’ll have to release the suspect soon if we’re not able to charge him. Honestly I just want it off my desk so I can get back to what I’m really supposed to be doing. Please?’
‘Why do you need me to bring him?’
‘Marit said Rashid’s really nervous of police, and that you’d gone with him all the previous occasions.’
Which is true. Rashid comes from a culture where you fear the police, and, whilst he’s adapted well to life here, some feelings run too deep to ever entirely eradicate. But I don’t want to go to the station; I want to sit back and watch the ripples and let the Sour Hound ease that tension away. I look down at the grinder only to discover I’m out. And the Sour Hound I’ve already inhaled has fled, tail between its legs.
I’m just about to say no when the idea hits: if Joel’s around I could drop in on him on the way back. I don’t buy from coffeeshops if I can help it. All that low-grade stuff they produce for the tourists is covered in pesticide residue and half the time grown so poorly they have to drench it with illegal research chemicals bought in bulk from China just so it has some nominal effect.
That’s junk. I need medicine. Which is where Joel comes in.
‘Call it repayment for the rock thing,’ Jansen says, breaking into my thoughts.
‘Well, shit, if I’d known you’d be so bitter … All right, I’m on my way.’
I fire off a text to Joel and get ready to leave. As I shrug on a fresh hoody, my arm still sore, I remember the letter. I pull it out of my jeans and drop it on the table.
Despite the darkness I can’t help but notice a few drops of blood on it.
I don’t know why, but I bend over and sniff it.