Incident room, late afternoon. Those present: Vermeer, Jansen and a bunch of junior staff I’ve been introduced to but whose names are going to take a little while to get straight in my head. The mood: sombre. Vermeer’s briefing everyone, and her clear and professional delivery makes me wonder if the reason Beving wants me to spy on her is purely because he’s afraid. Aside from the strangely private phone call she was having outside the law firm, from what little I’ve seen she’s more than competent, and a better cop than he’ll ever be. And really, wanting to keep a conversation private is hardly suspicious behaviour.
She raises a laugh when she recounts to the small team an account of my impersonation of a would-be benefit cheat, telling them that it was Oscar-worthy stuff. Whatever. She can scoff – it got a result.
The man on the phone had been monotone and guarded. Nonetheless, after having told him I had a council property which I wanted to sublet on a long-term basis he was interested, and he agreed to meet. Which we’re doing this evening.
Kush, I notice, is not much of a team player. He’s the only one in the room not paying attention, instead exploring the space with his nose. He seems particularly entranced by the open bin close to the door. Vermeer finishes up and throws it open for questions.
‘You checked they didn’t have any friends in common?’ I ask Jansen.
‘Nothing.’
I glance at the map on the far wall, the location of Kleine’s death marked by a red dot.
‘We need a map of the entire country.’
‘What are you thinking?’ Vermeer asks.
‘Apart from both being killed in the same way there’s so far been no link discovered between Muller and Kleine. And the person convicted of killing Muller is not only in prison, he’s incapacitated. And yet someone killed Kleine in exactly the same way. So far the only possibles have been Jan Akkerman and Robert Huisman. Huisman has conveniently disappeared and we’re still trying to locate Akkerman. But assuming that either he or Huisman, or both of them, are responsible for a moment, we’ve still got the question why? Why these two victims? They’re both young women, but neither showed any sign of sexual assault, and they both look different – different hair colour, different style, different body shapes – so they’re not an obvious type. So why did he pick them?’
‘Could just have been opportunity, sir?’ says one of the bright young things, a woman with dark shiny hair tied tight in a bun and quick, focused eyes.
‘Could be, but the way of killing seems so specific, so planned, that I can’t help think there’s more to it than that.’
‘Do you think they knew their killer, sir?’ Jansen asks.
‘I’ve got no evidence to say they did know their killer. It’s just a theory, which is our job to prove or disprove. And part of that is ruling in or out any connection between the victims. Let’s get a map of the whole country up and track their movements on it.’
‘How far back?’ Jansen asks.
‘Couple of years before Lucie’s death at least. Maybe more.’
Jansen nods, though I can tell he’s sighing inwardly; what I’ve just tasked him with is massive.
‘And we also need to keep in mind that this may not stop with Marianne Kleine.’ I look around the room, making sure everyone’s tuned in. ‘Two identical deaths, what’s to say there won’t be a third?’
‘What, in another seven years?’
‘Seven years, seven months, who knows? But it’s our responsibility to make sure it never happens.’
The team gets to work, Vermeer disappears, and I decide to drop in on Roemers, to see where he’s got on the payment Huisman made just before Kleine’s death. I head to the tech department, an airless room in the basement where Roemers is king, only to find the chair at his desk is empty. When I ask the nearest person, a middle-aged man who blinks a lot and never quite looks you in the eye, where Roemers might be all I get is a shrug and something about Roemers keeping his own counsel.
Back upstairs I get a call from Ron.
‘The Snake is in the nest,’ he says. ‘Repeat, the Snake is in the nest.’
I’m not sure Ron’s coping that well with leaving the police force. I try not to think what that bodes for me. Am I really ready to give this up?
I call across to Vermeer, letting her in on the news.
‘Right, back in the car,’ she says. ‘Oi, what are you doing?’
Everyone jumps, but it turns out she was directing herself at Kush, who now has his head deep in the bin. When he pulls it out he has a stroopwafel wrapper in his mouth. In the car pool I load him into the vehicle, having divested him of his prize.
‘Tomorrow you need to find somewhere for him to stay,’ she tells me as we head off.
‘Might not be a tomorrow.’
‘I know you had a breakdown but, damn, that sounds pretty pessimistic.’
‘No, what I mean is, there might not be a tomorrow because if we get lucky the guy we’re meeting will be able to tell us where Akkerman is. And I’m starting to feel he’s just as involved as Huisman. And if that’s true, we find one, we find the other.’
‘We can hope,’ she says, nosing out into traffic. ‘We can hope.’
The walls are vibrating, Claudia has been replaced with a young man who looks like he’s severely hung-over, and the club itself is fuller than it was earlier.
‘Do none of these people have jobs?’ Vermeer asks.
‘It’s bewildering, right?’ Ron says. He’s been drooling over Vermeer since we stepped in a few moments ago, and isn’t showing any sign of letting up. ‘I mean, just who the fuck are they? It costs a fortune to get in, the drinks are massively overpriced, it’s not even five o’clock on a weekday, and yet here they are.’
We all marvel for a minute at how the other half live before I ask where the man we’re interested in is. Ron speaks to the hung-over man who points to a screen marked LOWER BAR, LEFT CORNER. There are a series of semicircular booths all facing a stage. There’s a shiny pole in the middle of it, though as of yet the act hasn’t started. There are people in each booth, and the man points to one with three figures.
‘Snake’s the one in the middle.’
By the time we make it down there the show’s started. A woman in sparkling bright green high heels, red hair that’s got to be a wig, and a few scraps of fabric the same colour as the shoes strategically dotted around her body, is listlessly going through her act. Her eyes, when you glimpse them, show just how far away she is. Not that the punters seem to notice, they’re still drinking and cracking jokes with each other, all the while allowing their eyes to feast on the woman’s body.
We walk up to the table where the man known as Snake is and stand right in his view.
‘Fuck are you?’ he asks. ‘Out the way, babe.’
‘I haven’t been called that in a long time,’ I tell him. ‘What’s your name?’
He looks me up and down with a curl of the lip. Doesn’t respond.
‘What’s your name?’ Vermeer repeats.
‘Snake.’
‘Your real name.’
‘Didn’t you hear?’ says one of his companions, a man in a patterned shirt, enough buttons undone to show the tattoos rising up from his chest to his neck.
Vermeer flashes her badge. ‘Get lost,’ she says without even looking at him. ‘You as well.’
Snake stares at her, picks up a toothpick out of a little ceramic holder on the table and tries to dislodge something, probably imaginary, from between his teeth. Finally he nods and both men get up and walk away, taking their tall glasses of beer with them. The tattooed one glares at her as he goes past. Vermeer gives him the best fuck-you smile I’ve ever seen.
Once they’ve gone Vermeer speaks again. ‘Bit too seedy in here. Let’s go outside.’
Snake blinks in the light. The lighter flicks on with a chirp and he brings the writhing flame to the cigarette end dangling from his mouth. He takes a big draw. A long reverberating ship’s horn blares across the water behind him. I look up to see the same cruise ship I’d seen from Nellie’s gliding along the IJ, heading for open water. People on the deck wave towards land even though no one’s returning the greeting.
‘Yeah, I remember the guy,’ he’s saying. Now he’s away from the others he hasn’t exactly become cooperative, but there’s a little less bravado in his manner. ‘He was really aggressive, basically kicked off and got us all thrown out.’
‘And that wouldn’t be anything to do with you dealing drugs?’ Vermeer asks.
‘I’m not dealing anything, just there enjoying the show with a couple of mates.’
‘Every day?’ I ask. ‘Doesn’t it get a bit boring?’
‘I like watching women dance, what can I say?’
‘Did he ever buy from you before?’ Vermeer asks.
‘Like I said, I don’t know what you’re talking about; you can search me if you like.’ This was directed to Vermeer. ‘Don’t forget here.’ He grabs his crotch.
‘If you’re searched it’ll be back at the station by a couple of my male colleagues,’ Vermeer says. ‘They don’t really have a soft touch, and they’re very thorough. So, tell us everything about him.’
‘I’ve seen him around a bit. One night he got rowdy with us and got us all chucked out. Not seen him since, lucky enough for him.’
‘We need to speak to him. Any idea where we can find him?’
‘No idea, hardly knew the guy. And like I said already, pretty sure I’ve not seen him since then.’
He resists all further questioning and eventually we let him go. As we’re walking away he calls out to us. ‘Hey, wanna know why I’m called Snake?’
‘No.’
He sticks his tongue out and waggles it around. And there it is, a split making his tongue slightly forked.
‘Botched tongue-tie operation when I was a kid,’ he says. He sticks it out and waggles it again, before walking away, his fist raised, middle finger pointing right at the sky.
Back at the station we each go our own way, frustrated that yet another lead has just crumpled. But a couple of hours later Beernink comes through for us. He gets me on the phone, telling me he’s pulled the files from his offsite storage and is now sitting in his car in the car park going through them.
‘Anything which might tell us of Akkerman’s whereabouts?’ I ask.
‘We’ve got a correspondence address which was in use just over nine months ago when Akkerman’s inheritance was finally settled. Do you want it?’
‘Phone number, email?’
‘Not so far. I’ll carry on going through, if you need …?’
I get the feeling he wants to go home.
‘Give me the address, and if you get anything else then call me back.’
He tells me and I relay it to Vermeer who punches it into her phone.
‘Look at that, less than ten minutes away from the flat Huisman rents. Didn’t you say he used to live in Maastricht?’
‘Yeah, and now he’s moved close to his old buddy’s place.’
‘And then someone else dies in a way which perfectly matches a murder Huisman only got off from because of an alibi given to him by his BFF.’
I check the time; we’ve got a little over thirty minutes till I’m supposed to be meeting the man who handled the sublet.
‘Think we’ve got time to check it out?’
‘Let’s do it,’ Vermeer says.
Soon we’re turning into a street west of the Jordaan. The house we need is one of a row of council houses, many with Turkish flags hanging limp in the windows. Last year the Netherlands government turned away a series of Turkish politicians who’d come to the country to whip up support in their up-coming election, causing the then Turkish prime minister to compare the country as a whole to Nazi Germany. Unsurprisingly there’s been tension here ever since.
‘Not the kind of place I’d expect someone like Akkerman to live,’ Vermeer says as we near the number we’re looking for.
‘Because he’s not Turkish?’
‘Because he’s surely got more money than this, what with his inheritance.’
We find the number. No Turkish flags on the property, which is a good sign.
Vermeer presses the doorbell and steps back.
Footsteps in the hallway, the gravelly slide of a chain, the creak of the door. The woman standing there is my age or older with long brown hair tied up in a loose bun, a harried look about her face. She’s holding a wooden spoon in one hand and a bouquet of supermarket flowers, dead but still in the wrapper, in the other. She also has eyes the same colour as Tanya’s. But I’m not thinking about Tanya. I’m just not. Maybe I should be thinking of Sabine instead.
‘Yes?’ she asks, looking between us.
‘We’re looking for Jan Akkerman,’ Vermeer says, holding out her ID.
‘Who?’
Vermeer pulls out a mugshot I recognize from the Lucie Muller file.
‘Oh, him. He died four months ago. Didn’t you know?’