Roemers gets me just as I arrive back at the houseboat. I’m attempting to parallel park into a space I’m not entirely convinced is actually big enough. My hand hesitates over the phone, the panic which had engulfed me at the prison now largely gone, but the memory of it a warning nonetheless. A warning I should probably heed. Then again, if there’s even a chance that what I fear might be going on here is true, I can’t just walk away.
‘Got what you wanted,’ Roemers says. ‘Payment was made to a charitable foundation.’
‘Not a holiday company?’
‘No.’
‘So what sort of charity is Huisman giving two thousand euros to, then disappearing?’
‘That is exactly the question you should be asking, because I’ve got some other stuff to do which has been deemed urgent.’
‘Can you send me what details you’ve got?’
‘When I get a minute.’
I finish parking, just managing to squeeze in without any damage, and turn the engine off. Part of me had been hoping Roemers would get back to me with something straightforward, something that would mean I could just forget about it. Instead it’s just provoking questions, reigniting old paths in my brain, the investigative mind probing, constructing scenarios. It almost feels good. Which, I reflect as I reach for the door handle, isn’t good at all. I pass the postbox and before I know what I’m doing I pull the crumpled letter out of my pocket and jam it in the slot.
‘Jaap, we need to talk!’
I’m crossing the gangplank when Leah emerges on deck, waving her arms to get my attention. And she’s having to shout just to be heard above all the barking.
‘Sorry, Leah,’ I yell back. ‘I’m sure he’ll settle in soon. He’s just got to get used to it.’
‘He’s been doing that since you left; it’s driving me crazy.’
‘I’ll get it sorted.’
Though how, I’ve no idea. Kush explodes from the bathroom in a frenzy when I open the door; he almost seems pleased to see me. I take him up onto the roof and flop down in a deckchair. I’m finally starting to feel normal again. Going to the prison was a pretty good reminder of why I’m getting out. Clearly I’m still prone to stress reactions which can escalate way too quickly. Just as well I posted the letter.
But Klaasen.
I barely even recognized him, that’s how bad his injuries were. And if he wasn’t responsible for killing Lucie Muller, then …
Here was a man who’d always protested his innocence and I was finally starting to believe him. Only that line of thought would quickly lead back into panic; if he really is innocent, then I’m responsible for what happened to him. And what about Huisman? Why is he giving large sums of money to charity – and given what he must earn two thousand euros is a very large sum – then disappearing on holiday? And …
I breathe out a long slow breath. I tell myself none of this is my problem, that I need to relax, put it out of my mind. I shift my focus to the leaves shimmering over the canal water. They’re already starting to colour and the occasional one breaks loose and flips its way down to the water’s surface. But before I know it I’ve got my phone out and I’m googling the charity Huisman gave the money to. Roemers had sent me a text with the details, the name of the charity anonymous, ‘FZC International’, and Google comes up with nothing, apart from the register of companies and charities, showing that it was registered in Den Haag over ten years ago. But there’s nothing else, no website, no contact details other than a PO box in Haarlem, no explanation of what the charity exists to do. Ten minutes later, with me none the wiser, I start to wonder how it is they solicit donations like Huisman’s if there’s absolutely no information about who they are or what cause they represent. How would Huisman even know about their existence? I spend a few more minutes trying to convince myself it has nothing to do with the case, with Huisman’s disappearance. But I fail miserably. And despite my earlier resolve I realize this isn’t going to leave me alone. I clamber down from the roof, the dog jumping down to the deck with more grace than I manage.
Hank’s notes are there on the kitchen table and I sit down and open them up like they’re a holy text which will furnish me with all the answers I need.
Words can eat away at you like a virus. There’s no vaccine, you can’t unhear them, and once they’ve registered in your head there’s little you can do to stop their relentless march. At least I think that’s what’s happened in Vermeer’s case, because my phone went off as I was taking a break and we’re now talking. She’s covering herself, though, playing up Jansen’s involvement.
‘Jansen has convinced me that you could be an asset on this case. So here’s what I’m going to do. I’ll talk to my station chief and, assuming he agrees, I’ll find a place for you on my team. Purely in a consultancy role. But you’ve got to be clear on a couple of things.’
She reels off the usual: I work for her, I don’t do anything without her say-so, chain of command, blah, blah.
‘Agreed?’ she asks when she’s finished.
‘Agreed.’
‘You’ll get a call. Until then you are not to do anything in connection with this case. Understood?’
‘Understood. And there’s something I think you should know.’
I tell her about Huisman’s money and the payment to the mysterious charity which doesn’t seem to promote itself.
‘I’ll get Roemers onto it; he’s good at following trails. Anything else?’
‘Not so far.’
‘Good. Like I said, wait to hear from me. And, Rykel?’
‘Yeah?’
‘Don’t make me regret this.’
I head back into Hank’s notes, which are detailed and more orderly than mine tend to be. I follow the investigation through, all of it chiming with my own notes and I start to think there’s nothing here. But as I’m reading I start to wonder about Jan Akkerman. If it turns out that he was covering for Huisman by fabricating an alibi, was that just to help a friend out? Or was he also involved? Were there, in fact, two killers? I run through it all again, focusing on Akkerman, though initially I don’t find anything.
Three rings and Roemers picks up. I ask him to run a current location for Jan Akkerman.
‘This is for your memoirs I take it? Because I had Vermeer down here chewing my balls off for giving you Huisman’s details.’
‘We’ve made up; I’ve joined the investigation now.’
‘Really? So you won’t mind if I check with her first?’
‘Not at all.’
‘Just fucking with you, Rykel. Give me a minute …’
I hear the furious staccato tap of keys. ‘And … there are quite a few Jan Akkermans.’
‘Scroll through, one of them should be tagged from an old investigation.’
‘Nope, they’re all clean.’
‘What, all of them?’
‘Well, there are a few speeding tickets, one of them’s got a caution for chopping down a neighbour’s fence, some kind of boundary dispute. It’s all pretty hardcore stuff. Oh, here we go, there’s one here who was accused of groping a woman at a night club. Police were called, but in the end she didn’t press charges so he was just given a talking-to.’
‘When and where?’
‘Club 57, twentieth of Feb. this year. Isn’t that the place Ron Koopmans works at?’
‘Does he? Since when?’
‘Yeah, must have been when you were … off sick. He took early retirement. Pretty sure he’s now head of security there.’
I thank him and hang up. Club 57 is about ten minutes’ walk away, west of Centraal station. I think about it for a few moments. Kush is busy excavating soil with his snout from one of the flowerpots. He keeps flicking his head up, causing sprays of dirt to cascade everywhere. Vermeer was pretty clear about not doing anything before I heard back from her. But the way I see it is this: Kush could obviously use some exercise, and if we just so happen to stroll past Club 57, then what of it?
Just over ten minutes later I reach the building. Despite the early hour the heavy thump of bass is audible way down the street. The guy on the door – black jeans, black shirt, a curl of white snaking out of his ear – stops me.
‘No dogs allowed.’
‘Ron Koopmans in?’
The guy’s neck is almost as thick as his head, which is shiny-bald.
‘Who wants to know?’
‘Jaap Rykel.’ He stares at me. ‘Inspector Jaap Rykel,’ I clarify after a few more moments.
He looks me up and down once before raising his arm and talking to his cuff.
A few minutes later Ron steps out through a fire door further down the building, and waves me over whilst he holds it open. He’s a good head shorter than me, allowing me to see he’s starting to thin on top. As if to make up for it he’s wearing a beard, which I’m sure he never used to.
‘Jaap, how are you? Long time no see.’
‘Yeah, good.’
He looks at me as if he can see the lie, but doesn’t comment. ‘Come in.’
‘What about him?’ I point to Kush. ‘Your guy said no dogs.’
Ron gives him the once-over, then shrugs. ‘Frankly he looks more civilized than most of the customers here. Anyway, I’m head of security. Shall we?’
We catch up whilst he takes me through a series of corridors to his office, a room with a massive bank of computer screens covering just about every angle in the club’s multiple rooms. A woman with spiky dyed-blonde hair and large hooped earrings sits in front of them.
‘So, what can I do for you? Assuming this wasn’t all social.’
I tell him about the report of a Jan Akkerman caught groping a woman.
‘Honestly, it’s not that rare an occurrence sadly. When did you say it was?’
‘Twentieth of February.’
‘Claudia, you remember that?’
Claudia turns to look at us. She’s older than I assumed from the hairstyle; she must be well into her fifties.
‘So many creeps,’ she says. ‘What was that date again?’
Ron tells her.
‘You can look it up in the dailies then,’ and she turns back to the bank of screens.
For some reason I get the sense there’s something between these two. More power struggle than anything romantic, though. Ron rolls his eyes, sighs, mutters something about doing stuff yourself being the only way to make sure it’s done right, and opens a laptop. As it’s booting up he points to one of the screens on the bank, a bird’s-eye view of one of the largest rooms in the club. The wall is made entirely of glass, opening onto a view of the IJ’s waters. I realize I could probably see Nellie’s house across the water if I were to go and stand in the room and look north.
‘That’s the one,’ Ron says.
‘The one what?’
‘The window Tanya shot. It’s like a legend down here, cost the owners a lot of money to repair. They weren’t happy; their insurance only covered part of it. In fact, we’ve got it here somewhere. Claudia, can you put it on?’
Tanya had told me about this, but I didn’t realize there was footage of it. It happened just a few days after we’d met, the separate cases we’d been working on crossing like fate. So much has happened since. All I can think is, I wish it hadn’t.
She’d come to the club in search of a suspect in a child-kidnapping ring we eventually brought down. The suspect in question decided he didn’t want to talk to her, however, and had assaulted her instead. Tanya was forced to pull her weapon, which would have put an end to it except the suspect had an accomplice who’d tried to take the gun off her. Which is when the shot was fired.
Claudia points to a screen, which was blank but now flickers on to show the main room, a few people in it. There’s movement in the bottom-left corner, and my heart thumps as I recognize Tanya, her face visible for a split second as she wrestles with the man trying to take the gun off her.
‘And … boom!’ Ron and Claudia say in unison like an old couple just as a spark of muzzle flash appears, and the massive wall of clear glass frosts over in an instant. Then the whole thing falls away, the view restored. Tanya’s no longer on the screen, but I remember that she’d managed to fight the guy off and single-handedly arrest both men.
‘I love watching that,’ Ron says as the image cuts to black. ‘Awesome woman. You got yourself a good one there. Okay, here it is,’ he says, having spent some time navigating various menus, clicking ever deeper into the belly of the beast. ‘What do you want to know?’
What I want to know is why it’s all so difficult, why I ended up hurting the only person I’d ever truly loved. Why I’m such a fuck-up. Why the black wolf is inside me and won’t leave.
But all I say is, ‘Everything you’ve got.’
‘Not much, but …’ He hits the enter key and a printer across the room whirrs into life just as my phone goes off. Vermeer.
‘I’ve got something I need you to do,’ she says. ‘Marianne Kleine’s sister Cheryl is landing at Schiphol airport just past midday. Jansen’s going to talk to her and I want you with him. He’ll pick you up.’
‘I can do that,’ I tell her. ‘Does that mean I’ve been approved?’
‘Not quite. There’s something else you’re going to have to do first.’
‘Which is …?’
‘Frank Beving wants to have a chat with you; he’ll be the one with the final say.’
‘When?’
‘Soon as you can make it to the station.’
Ron hands me the paper and as he escorts me back through the building I ask him about civilian life.
‘Thinking of getting out are you?’
‘Might be.’
‘Well, my advice to you is this, make sure you’ve got a proper job lined up before you send your resignation letter in. Otherwise you might end up doing something like this.’
‘Can’t be that bad, can it?’
Ron mimics hanging himself, head lopsided, tongue out of the side of his mouth and a strange gurgling sound which makes Kush perk his ears up. As I feel the draught of air from the security door closing behind me I see my hand slipping the letter into the postbox, a flash of white disappearing into the darkness.