‘Seriously, how much?’
I’m with Rashid, we’re walking down Marnixstraat, the station less than two minutes away, and I’m listening to the electrician reel off his fees for an out-of-hours call. Out of hours? The way I see it, it’s dark, the most likely time you’re going to need light. Try telling the station chief that you’re not heading out to the crime scene because it’s out of hours and see what happens. I ask what the in-hours rate is and just as he answers a tram judders past and I have to get him to repeat himself. I settle for an appointment tomorrow morning. By the time I hang up my phone’s like a hot coal.
‘Will I have to see him?’ Rashid asks. He’s in jeans and an Ajax sweater, a team he’s embraced with a fanatical zeal that some of his countrymen pour into headier philosophies than football.
‘Most likely he’ll be in a room. You’ll be able to see him but he won’t be able to see you,’ I reassure him.
I can understand his hesitation. Rashid came to the Netherlands to escape conflict. I don’t know the full extent of it because he’s never told me, but from what I’ve managed to piece together he’s the only survivor from a large family. He’d run the usual gauntlet of immigrant jobs until he’d struck lucky, a boutique roastery out in Haarlem. He started off as floor sweeper but whilst there had discovered a love for coffee and had eventually persuaded the company owners to give him a chance at learning to roast. Which turned out to be the best move ever, because Rashid found he was an artist, his medium the bean. Less than six years later he’d opened his own place, complete with two very expensive coffee machines. The Van der Westen Speedsters, he’d told me many times, are like the Bentleys of coffee making. He doted on those things, cleaning them up each night with a spit polish so they started the next day with a gleam.
A gleam which had caught someone else’s eye, because one night he’d heard noises, sneaked down the steep, twisted stairs from his flat and got knocked unconscious by the man who’d broken in. Rashid woke on the cafe floor with a cricked neck, a bad concussion and two spaces on the counters where the Speedsters had been. He’s been battling the insurance company ever since.
‘This will help with insurance?’
‘Hard to say. But maybe.’
‘Hope so. I had to get loan to buy new machine.’
‘How much did that cost?’
He tells me. Jesus. I hope for his sake the insurance comes through, and fast.
The station’s just up ahead now. Apart from a couple of secondments to Haarlem and Den Haag early on, it’s been my home for the best part of eleven years. And like any home, the people there became like family. As in, we bickered, talked behind each other’s backs and held on to resentments long enough to forget what we were actually resenting in the first place. In between that we managed to solve a few murders as well, so it wasn’t all bad.
A desk sergeant I don’t recognize is busy processing two arrests as I step inside so I take a look around. There are framed photos on the wall, previous station chiefs, all in full regalia. One of them makes my stomach flip. Station Chief Henk Smit. His unexplained disappearance last year was a major embarrassment to the force.
He’s laughing. I shove the gun right into his face. The barrel pushes his lip up. There’s a rough band of yellow plaque on his canine. My finger’s on the trigger and –
The flashback cuts out, jarring me back into reality. The curse of PTSD: the flashbacks which seem more real than real.
‘Jaap Rykel?’
The source of my name is the desk sergeant; he’s giving me an odd look.
‘Sign here,’ he says, holding out a pen. ‘Inspector Jansen told me to look out for you.’
I get my signature on the page. It’s shaky as hell.
We’re just being handed our VISITOR badges, which feels strange and sad at the same time, when I spot Jansen. He’s about my height, short blond hair, and always looks like he’s ready to spring into action at a moment’s notice. Since I last saw him he’s obviously been working out. His shirt sleeves are tight with pumped muscle, though his face is maybe gaunter than I remember.
‘Sir, thanks for coming in. This shouldn’t take long.’
‘Seriously, what’s up with the “sir”? You never called me that when I was actually your boss.’
‘New regime.’ He rolls his eyes. ‘Just got into the habit I guess.’
‘Yeah, it all seems a bit different around here.’
‘You don’t know the half of it. Beving got promoted to station chief.’
‘Whoa.’
‘Tell me about it.’
I make the introductions, and Jansen takes us through the airport-style security, another new addition, and into the building itself. Jansen’s talking to Rashid, explaining what’s going to happen, and I lag behind, shaken by the flashback, already regretting my decision to come here.
We turn the corner, past the first of two main incident rooms, and down the corridor to the stairs which lead to the basement, where the main interrogation suite is. Jansen and Rashid are ahead of me, their heads just disappearing down the steps when the lift door opens. Lazy man’s option. Two uniforms get out and I duck in and hit the basement button. The lift pings, and the doors slide shut. Next to me a female officer holds a large pile of papers. The top one catches my eye – a crime-scene photo. In it a naked body is kneeling on the ground in a pool of blood. The tag across the top reads MARIANNE KLEINE. I stare at it and all of a sudden I’m stepping into a room in another time, another place. The victim, Lucie Muller, is naked, kneeling on the ground in a pool of blood, her torso bent forward over her knees. Her forehead touches the ground in a weird parody of worship, and her arms are straight by her sides, hands by her feet. I move forward on weightless legs, moving round to try and see her face. But her hair is covering it, falling down into the blood, spreading out like roots.
‘Sir, you all right?’ The voice jolts me back. I’m standing in the lift, the officer with the photo gone, another one holding the lift door open and looking at me with concern.
I can’t believe I’ve had a second flashback within minutes of the first. That’s unusual. And doesn’t bode well. I need to get out of here and get to Joel’s as soon as I can.
‘Yeah, fine,’ I say, taking a couple of breaths. ‘Never been better.’
I catch up with them in the basement, after another uniform has scrutinized my pass to make sure I’m not a terrorist, or worse, an undercover reporter.
‘There you are, thought I’d lost you.’ Jansen’s just opening the door to interview room number five.
‘Listen, there’s something I need to tell you. That case you’re working on, is it the Kleine case?’
He stops and turns, hand on the door knob. ‘Yeah, why?’
But suddenly I don’t know what to say. Or rather, I know what to say, I just don’t want to say it. I feel as if I’m perfectly balanced between two worlds. Jansen’s looking at me with raised eyebrows.
‘Look, we’re on the clock here,’ he says. ‘I’ve got less than twenty minutes before I either have to charge the guy or release him so …’
‘Okay, let’s get this over with first.’
He gives me a sceptical look, then nods. ‘Rashid’s in the viewing room.’
I join Rashid and we watch through the two-way mirror as Jansen enters the interview room. Gangsta-slumped in a chair is a North African man, Moroccan most likely. The suspect’s wearing a white tracksuit, with double gold stripes snaking down the arms and trouser legs. He’s got tramlines buzzed into his hair and a single stud winks from his ear when he moves his head.
Jansen steps into the room, pulls out the chair and sits down. He flips open a file and after quickly scanning it starts talking. Almost immediately the Moroccan shakes his head in response.
We’ve got no sound so I find the audio switch and flip it on.
‘So then what?’ Jansen’s saying. ‘Then you just happened to be there? Right at that moment?’
‘Bro, like I told you already.’
Jansen nods slowly, a sage pondering great insight. A good interviewer is like an actor, the role you play dictated by the situation, by the suspect themselves. Sometimes it takes playing several roles before you find the one that unlocks something in them.
Jansen pulls out a couple of photographs from the file and slides them across. He taps one of them with his forefinger.
‘See, the thing is we’ve got these images of you less than two streets away from the place where the burglary and assault took place.’
Tracksuit refuses to even look at them. Suddenly Jansen jumps up from his chair, shoots his hand across the table, cups the man’s skull and forces his head forward so his nose is millimetres from the images. Fair to say Jansen’s just switched roles to bad cop.
‘And you see that time stamp?’ he shouts at him. ‘Can you see that? Huh? It fits exactly. Exactly.’
He releases him and sits back as if nothing’s happened, flips further through his file.
‘And the money that was found at your flat …’ Jansen is all calm business now, as if he’s a civil servant rubber-stamping traffic-light legislation. He finds the photo he’s after and slides it across. Rashid and I lean forward, just enough to catch the image of two evidence bags with fat rolls of notes. ‘This money, where did it come from?’
Tracksuit sucks his teeth, but just stares at the wall behind Jansen.
When it’s clear Tracksuit has nothing to say, Jansen exits the room and pops his head into ours.
‘Okay, zero hour. I’ve got to charge or release. But what we’ve got is pretty circumstantial and without something else I’m most likely going to have to release him.’ He gives Rashid an expectant look.
‘If he convicted, do I get money back?’ Rashid asks.
‘That’s hard to say at this stage, but to be honest it will take a while for this to get to court and –’
‘Yes,’ Rashid says, still staring through the mirror. ‘It is him. He is man who assaulted me and stole my coffee machines.’
Rashid seems to have gone from unsure to very sure in a quick space of time. Jansen throws a questioning glance my way. The only answer I can give is a shrug.
‘Okay. We’ll charge him now.’
By the time it’s all wrapped up and I’ve sent Rashid off into the night Jansen suggests we get a drink. Up in the deserted canteen we grab a seat by the window overlooking the intersection. The glass is frosted with condensation and changes colour with the traffic lights just outside.
‘So …’ Jansen says as he blows on his coffee.
The Red Bull hisses as I pull the ring. I take a couple of large gulps. Tastes of chemicals, but they’re always promising wings, and right now I need all the help I can get; flashbacks and a lack of the one thing capable of stopping them, cannabis, is not a good combination. Coming here was a mistake, and I should have left just now with Rashid. But I can’t unsee what I saw.
‘The case you’re working is the Marianne Kleine case?’
Jansen nods and very discreetly checks his watch.
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Have you heard of Lucie Muller?’
‘No, should I have?’
One of the canteen staff drops a tray, and cutlery jangles and clatters to the ground.
I suddenly feel split in two: one part urging me on, the other telling me to get up and walk out, leave all this behind. Because the last thing I want is to get sucked back in. But I think of Lucie Muller, and the man I put away for her death, Sander Klaasen. I take a breath, then I begin to talk.