He’s laughing now, and before I know what I’m doing I have the gun in my hand. I shove it right in his face. That shuts him up. There’s a flash of fear in his eye. The barrel pushes his lip, revealing teeth so it looks like he’s sneering. A night insect buzzes by. I can feel the trigger, the tension of it against my finger. His Adam’s apple bobs and I …
… wake on my back, heart thudding, hand clasped tight round something. I lift it to see it’s not a gun but an empty cup. A boat glides past and I lie gently rocking in its wake, the subtle movement gradually slowing my heart and breathing down.
In the kitchen I take the letter off the table and stuff it into an envelope whilst trying to avoid looking at my signature. I spend a few moments puzzling over why the kettle won’t fire up before I remember about the electricity. My body’s aching a bit from the fall, the wound in my arm feels hot, and I really need some coffee. The electrician said he’d be round at ten, and, checking the time, I see I’ve got enough time to get out to the lock-up and finally finish the work I’d started months ago. But first I need to medicate.
I collect the prescription every month at the pharmacy on Spuistraat. The paroxetine is blue and was the first one prescribed. Unfortunately it comes with side effects; it gave me the runs. And really, Uncomplicated PTSD is bad enough without the feeling that you’re going to shit yourself the whole time. In addition, it never seemed to do anything for the flashbacks and it only improves the hyper-real dreams by about five per cent, which is hardly a stellar job. So I was then given another, a pink pill to try and negate the bowel issues. Only there were side effects to that as well, and on and on, until one morning I was staring at a pyramid of pill bottles on my kitchen table towering over me ominously. At which point I claimed to be side effect free because I couldn’t face any more. So, all told, there’s a rainbow of them: blue, pink, yellow, white, round, lozenge-shaped, ones that need to be cut in half, others that need to be taken in multiples, some with enteric coatings, some that dissolve right on your tongue.
I prep them all, opening each one in turn until I have the required daily dose, and put the bottles back. Next I take the pills themselves, cradled in the palm of my hand, to the bathroom, lift the toilet seat and drop them in. They look pretty in the bowl, and when I flush they bob and swirl around and disappear in a most therapeutic manner.
There, much better already.
I gather up my stuff: vape, rolling paper and, a last-minute decision, my old glass pipe. Just in case. To get to Rashid’s I need to walk south-west along the canal, cross at the Lijnbaansgracht bridge, and then double back up the other side. The movement seems to shake loose the thoughts that I’ve been doing my best to ignore since I woke; Inspector Vermeer thinks I might have sent an innocent man to prison where he ended up with permanent brain damage. Worse, if Klaasen was innocent then I let the real killer walk free to kill again. On the bridge the breeze rolls a can towards me. I stomp on it until it’s completely flat. A couple of tourists, wary of me, cross to the other side.
I’m first in and Rashid waves me over. He’s excited. In fact, he’s beaming from ear to ear. He points to the reason: a new coffee machine glinting like some alien spacecraft that came in to land during the dead of night.
‘They paid up?’
Rashid’s still grinning, unless he’s had a stroke and his face is now paralysed. He grabs a cloth and fusses over the machine, rubbing off an imaginary smudge then standing back to admire it again.
‘No, I told you, I took a loan. This was delivered first thing this morning. Is beautiful, no? Is Elektra Belle Epoque,’ he says as if that means something, before taking me through the highly technical features. When he’s finished I ask him how much. He tells me. Now I really need a coffee. I hope the insurance company pays up in full, and soon.
I take a table by the window and find a socket in the wall. There’s a moment of indecision: I’ve only got one charger cable and both a phone and a vaporizer that need electrons pooling inside them. Reluctantly I choose the phone. Rashid’s already at it, the hiss and scream of the new machine even more serious than the previous models. Once my phone’s live I pull up Sabine’s text. I hesitate for a moment, then fire one back. I find my heart’s beating a little faster as Rashid brings over the coffee. He hovers whilst I take a sip.
‘It’s like engine oil,’ I say.
Rashid looks worried. ‘You don’t like? I can –’
‘Rashid, I’m kidding. It’s the best cup you’ve done me yet.’
I need sunglasses for his smile. He goes off to serve a couple who’ve just stumbled in looking even more in need of coffee than me. I check my inbox, and buried in the usual onslaught of junk there’s one from Jansen, saying he’s following up my discussion with Vermeer last night and he’s getting someone to drop the full Kleine file at the houseboat this morning. Before I can stop myself I’ve tapped out a quick message telling him to leave it behind the cluster of flowerpots on deck if I’m out. Whereas I should have told him not to bother. Was Sander Klaasen innocent? Is Marianne Kleine’s death my fault?
I finish up and leave a large tip for Rashid. To exit I have to step under a ladder which has appeared over his front door. I hope it’s not bad luck. I turn to see a man at the top of it fixing a CCTV camera to the wall. It’s good he’s getting it done, but really Rashid should have had one before.
Now I’m on foot, forging through the city towards Centraal station. Bikes whizz, trams clang. I pass through pockets of air scented with coffee, pizza by the slice, sewage, before stopping off at a bank to pull some money out of the wall. I type in my pin then request 200 euros. The machine gives me a large frowny face and a message saying there’s not enough in the account for that. I try for one-fifty and this time get a smiley. Infantilized by a machine, this is what it’s come to. The 08:12 to Haarlem’s on time, so I optimistically buy a single, jump on, watch the scenery, before jumping off at Sloterdijk. From there it’s a short walk to the lock-up that holds the thing that has been keeping me sane these last months, and today is the day when all that work is going to pay off. I hope.
It’s a 1969 Mustang SportsRoof in matt black, which I bought for next to nothing and have been trying to get roadworthy ever since. When I say kept me sane what I really mean is that it’s driven me crazy, but at least it was an externally focused crazy. I’ve scraped knuckles raw whilst trying to unscrew bolts deep in the engine cavity; I’ve banged thumbs and sliced flesh. I’ve also waited weeks for a part to arrive only to discover it’s not quite right, or opened up a pipe to have disgusting, and clearly dangerous, fluid seep over my fingers.
It’s really my therapist’s fault. She’d been urging me to take up a hobby, something using my hands, something to get me out of the houseboat at least once a week. Which all sounded like a pretty tall order, and the thought of trying to find an activity that would fit all those criteria was starting to stress me out, until I passed a used-car place near Stadionplein. I spotted it almost immediately and had a weird out-of-body experience, a kaleidoscopic mash-up of every car ad cliché I’d ever seen. I cruise curvaceous mountain roads with snowy peaks and blue skies, I zoom across a never-ending bridge with a woman sat beside me, hair blowing in the wind, I park with a flourish in front of a modernist building in an impossibly beautiful setting. Of course the woman bears a distinct resemblance to Tanya.
Before I knew it I found myself walking up to the salesperson who’d obviously clocked my altered state and was mentally limbering up for the kill.
Sure it needed some work, he’d said with a car salesman’s smile, a little TLC to get it back on the road. And sure, it’s a little effort now, but it will be worth it, cars like this are becoming rarer and rarer, he said. Also, and here he dropped his voice and took a quick look around to make sure we weren’t being overheard, he could envisage a not-too-distant future where a car such as the very one I was looking at, properly restored, would be worth considerably more than the minuscule asking price.
‘Can I do this myself?’ I asked. ‘Given that I don’t know anything about cars.’
He didn’t even miss a beat. I got the feeling he never blinked.
‘Sure,’ he’d said. ‘Sure, sure. All the information’s online. You can find second-hand spares there too. And you don’t need a raised ramp or anything.’
I called Mark Sattler who runs the car pool back at the station. He came out later that day, eventually agreed that it was probably doable, and grudgingly said he may, and he stressed the may, be able to help out occasionally if needed. Two days later I had it delivered to the lock-up I’d rented off the Marktplaats website. When the truck pulled away I wondered just what on earth I was doing.
The lock-up door rattles as I haul it open and flip on the light. The bonnet’s up, a patient waiting for the surgeon, and I take a minute to check over everything I’d done yesterday. Satisfied that it was all good I turn to the final job: I need to attach the throttle body to the air induction system, and attach the air induction system to the air filter. Then it should be good to go. In the end the therapist was right, there’s something about working with your hands that changes your perspective. She’d said that it can actually alter your brain chemistry in such a way that old patterns can be disrupted.
‘Nice car. Rent please.’
I turn to see Mark Liu silhouetted in the doorway. He’s second-gen Chinese, his parents fleeing the Cultural Revolution to scrape a living with one of the first Chinese restaurants in the city. How he’s ended up renting out these places is a mystery, but not one I’ve been overly inclined to delve into, not least because the rents he charges are well below market rate. As long as payment’s in cash. My wallet splits open, and I count the notes and hand them over.
‘So, how far off are you?’
‘I reckon about half an hour. I just need to connect up the throttle body.’
I marvel at the fact that five months ago I didn’t know what a throttle body was. In fact, the words ‘throttle’ and ‘body’ usually had a whole other meaning for me.
‘Nice, but I still don’t know why you didn’t just buy a normal car.’
‘I’m not normal.’
This seems to satisfy him, like he’d known that all along but just needed to hear it from me.
Once Liu’s gone I stash next month’s rent in an old paint tin in a pile of old paint tins and fish out a can of Red Bull. I keep a few here for when I’m working on the car, but notice I’m down to my last three. I crack one open and get back to work.
I’m done in twenty, with only a minor bruise to the back of my hand. I stand and look at the engine before taking out the keys, opening the driver’s door, and inserting them in the ignition. If this thing blows I don’t want to be inside it. I take a breath – this is months of work – and turn the key.
The engine makes a series of choking noises before dying off.
Fuck. At least it didn’t explode, though. I go back to the engine cavity and it takes me another ten minutes to see what I’d missed: two 8-mm bolts that hold the induction tube on to the throttle body weren’t properly tightened, allowing air to escape. I fix it and try again.
This time it comes to life with a meaty roar. I can hardly believe it. I’ve done it. I get in and gun the motor. Oh. Yeah.
I take it easy at first, but once I hit the A10 northbound I squeeze down the pedal and she responds beautifully. I’m pretty sure I hit warp speed before I realize that my exit’s flying towards me. I slow down and take the ramp on to the A5, curling back round the city in an elegant arc. This is the long way, and thirty minutes later I’m pulling up outside the houseboat completely exhilarated. I park, get out and take a moment to admire my work. Who’d’ve thought?
As I step onto the gangplank the Westerkerk bells start ringing ten. On deck I notice Jansen’s package hidden poorly behind the flowerpots, which I keep meaning to plant up but never seem to get round to. I pull it out to see whoever addressed it to me misspelt my name.
First thing I see on board is the envelope with the signed letter dominating the kitchen. It’s like a sign. I suddenly get the feeling I’ve been waiting for, the reluctance melting away. Why has it taken me so long? I wonder. The drive gave me time to think of Joel’s proposal, and I’d come to the conclusion that really the only thing I had to lose was the money. And if it paid off I wouldn’t have to get some shit security job, which is what retired inspectors usually ended up doing if they’d not made pensionable age, which I’m very far off. I put it by the front door, so I remember to post it next time I go out.
I’m still holding Jansen’s file. Really I should just call him now and say I’m not going to look at it.
Sander Klaasen could be innocent. You’re responsible for Marianne Kleine’s death.
I sit down at the kitchen table and take a deep breath. Then I open up the file. The more I read the more my stomach drops away.
Footsteps clatter on the gangplank just as I’ve finished going through it. At the door is a man so unabashedly unconcerned with the fact that I’ve been waiting around for him that he must be the electrician. I lead him to the circuit board, which is located in the former engine room at the aft of the boat. Back at the table I realize I’d left the photos out. Which probably has something to do with the strange looks he gave me on the way down.
There’s a box under the sink unit in the kitchen where I keep copies of a few old files. Only those that were either unsolved, or which were solved but that just never felt right. Lucie Muller’s one of latter. Back at the table I clear Vermeer and Jansen’s file away and start reading through the Muller case, and I’m struck all over again by the similarities. It’s uncanny – there is no way this is a coincidence. None at all.
I take a quick break on deck, rolling a joint with Joel’s white cannabis. Smoke curls up in the strangely still air. I watch a seagull cruise out of the sky, wings hooked, orange feet splayed out haphazardly, adjusting as it comes in to land on the water.
Back at the table, reading faster now, seeing how Hank and I tackled the investigation, watching it unfold on paper. I take the photos of Lucie Muller out, compare them to Marianne Kleine. This can’t be coincidence. It just can’t. I read on, flipping between the two, hoping to find something, some detail which could explain the similarity away, all the while the air around me thickening with dread.
Ten minutes later I find it. There’s a bit of paper stuck to the back of one of the Muller case photos and when I peel them apart I find it’s the tech report on the video itself, the one that featured Huisman and the two hopefuls. I place it in the pile and start putting the whole lot away when something makes me stop and go back to it. I read it through properly. The name of the requesting officer is de Vries, and the technical officer who did the report is Joos Wilders. The report says, in the stiff formal language these things are always written in, that the footage had definitely been taken from the video camera recovered at Akkerman’s house. I turn the sheet over, expecting more, but the other side is blank. There should be more to this, specifically a check that the time and date displayed on the camera were actually correct, the whole point of getting the report done. I search through the rest of the file. Nothing. I search again, my heart beating faster this time. Again, nothing. I tell myself to calm down. I get on the phone to the department responsible, ask to speak to Joos Wilders.
‘He retired,’ the crackly voice tells me. ‘About four, maybe five years ago?’
I give the voice the report reference number and tell him to pull the file and email it over to me. I give him my personal address, saying there’s something wrong with my work one. He doesn’t even bat an eyelid; I wonder if I should tell someone about the lack of security. On deck I go through another joint. Just a small one this time.
‘Mate?’
‘Yeah?’ I turn to see the electrician poking his head out of a porthole.
‘I need to show you something.’
Down in the engine room the circuit board looks like a terrorist bomb mid-manufacture, a multitude of coloured wires spilling out of the box. It seems very far from being fixed. I tell him this.
‘Gonna be a while,’ he says. ‘This thing was wired up by a monkey. You’re lucky it didn’t catch fire.’
‘Fucking monkeys, they’re everywhere.’
I’m not sure he hears me.
‘So I need to get a few extra parts. These bits here are screwed, probably what tripped the whole thing.’
‘When will you be back?’
‘Later today, tomorrow at the latest.’
‘So what am I supposed to do in the meantime. If it is tomorrow?’
‘Well, you see this switch here?’
He’s pointing to a black plastic switch, the type that flips up or down. I concede that I can see it.
‘Good, so whilst I’m gone, don’t touch this, okay?’
I let him out and find myself back in the engine room. The electrics haven’t been touched since the boat was converted, so I’m not really that surprised. I find myself reaching out for the switch and I wonder why I’ve never been very good at doing what I’m told.
The phone saves me, snaps me out of it. The buzz is an email which turns out to be the report I’d asked for. I go back to the table, ready to compare it with what I’ve got, but when I open the attachment I see there’s only one page, the same one as in the file. There’s no second page, nothing to indicate they performed the most basic of tests. Hank de Vries had been in charge of that; he was a good cop – there’s no way he’d’ve made such a mistake. Mistake being code for Monumental Fuck-up.
I call them back. Same voice as before.
‘Is there any way there’s a missing sheet?’
‘No, I checked. Each page is given a unique reference which is logged on the system. This report only ever had one page.’
‘So whoever did it didn’t check the time on the camera itself?’
‘If they did, they didn’t make a note of it.’
Deck again, another half-joint, and I find my hand shaking a little as I light it. More birds. I look across at the Mustang; one of them’s Jackson Pollocked the bonnet – a massive splodge of white shit, bright and watery against the matt black.
Back inside I stare at the table, the papers spread all over it. I’m overwhelmed by jittery coldness. I go through it again, and again. The feeling only gets worse. I know what it is; I’ve felt it before. It’s denial.
Because from what I can see, Huisman’s alibi, the one that meant he didn’t go to prison for the murder of Lucie Muller, has just crumbled away.