The sound of his phone ringing woke Elvis with a jolt. Shrill and on maximum volume, he fumbled with the device, trying to silence it as quickly as possible. Dropped it between the bed and the bedside cabinet. Realised it was neither his bed nor his bedside cabinet.
‘Dirk speaking,’ he said, retrieving it just in time. His sluggish brain registered retrospectively that Marie’s name had flashed up. ‘Oh, hi, Marie.’ No opportunity to ditch the call. As he spoke, only 25 per cent of his brain was dealing with speech. The rest was grappling with crippling embarrassment, some shame, a great deal of surprise and guilt at what had come to pass in the small hours.
‘You sound like you’ve just woken up,’ she said. It sounded like an accusation. Was it? Or was he just being paranoid?
‘I’m working undercover, remember?’ he said, pulling the duvet up to hide his nakedness from the waist down. Recognising the bitter irony but unable to enjoy the humour in it. He had crossed a line.
‘Well, you’d better get your head on straight because a body has just been found by the Keizersgracht. I’m there now. Van den Bergen’s on the flight back from Prague but won’t be in until this afternoon. He told me to call you.’ Her tone was castigatory. But then nowadays, Marie often sounded slightly like a disapproving teacher in a strict Catholic school.
‘Jesus,’ he said, glancing over to his bedfellow, who still slept soundly.
His phone buzzed. A text coming through. Buzzed again. Silently, he prayed it was nothing to do with his mother. Perhaps just some inane sales communication from the network provider.
‘Okay. I’m not far away. I’ll be there in half an hour, max.’
‘You’d better make it faster than that,’ Marie said. ‘Marianne’s coming to retrieve the body any minute and I’m struggling to take statements from witnesses and neighbours. I’m in charge of about six uniforms, who are cordoning off the scene. There’s a stack of rubber-neckers, all trying to get a look at the corpse.’ Her voice was becoming more high-pitched by the second. ‘I can’t do all this on my own!’
‘I’m coming. Hang tight. I’m leaving now.’
Ringing off, Elvis checked his texts with a racing pulse. Seven of them stacked up and awaiting his attention. Three missed calls. How the hell had he not heard them? Since when had he ever slept that deeply? ‘Shit!’ he said aloud.
The texts continued, getting progressively worse, until the final two, which reported that his mother was hooked up to an antibiotic drip and had been given oxygen. Her symptoms had eased. She was stable.
At his side, the man he had spent the night with – Arne – stirred. ‘You okay?’ he asked, stretching. In the almost-daylight of the bedroom, with the white blinds pulled, he looked different. More human. Less perfect. Better.
Elvis blushed, remembering the point in the club during which he had stopped being a professional and started to be a thirty-something man who was so tired of juggling, so tired of putting everybody else first, so tired of running the other way whenever the opportunity for adventure or fun presented itself. He’d had enough of being scared to live. And when the nice man with the kind face and mesmerising eyes had leaned in to kiss him, unexpectedly, Elvis’ brain and body had been flooded with endorphins and adrenalin and a desperate hankering for something beyond policing and the part-time palliative care of his mother.
‘I’ve got to go,’ he said, springing from the bed. Scanning the room for the trail of clothes that had been successively abandoned in the heat of the moment. ‘There’s an emergency with my mother and I’ve just had an urgent callout from work.’ He could feel the anxiety mounting, replacing the scorching embarrassment that was leaching heat from every pore in his body.
‘Oh,’ Arne said. Disappointment evident. Surprisingly.
Turning back to him as he pulled on his pants, Elvis frowned. ‘You’re sad that I’m going?’ he asked.
Arne sprang out of bed. Struggling to look at his nakedness now that morning had arrived, bringing with it the usual limitations, expectations and pressures that shaped Elvis’ mundane existence, he focused on his socks. Hopping on his left foot, as he pulled one onto the right.
‘Wait!’ Arne said.
He placed a hand on Elvis’ shoulder, so that Elvis had no option but to stand and face him. Confronted by those huge eyes, easily as beautiful as any girl’s he’d ever seen. They kissed. Elvis felt the memories of the previous night register in his groin. Lust that he’d never thought himself capable of. Passion that he had never quite achieved with women. It had felt right. Arne’s body somehow seemed to fit him properly – a sensation that had always eluded him in the handful of abortive sexual encounters he’d had over the years. And yet, the sharp scratch of his stubble made him break off.
‘Seriously. I’m sorry, but I have to go.’ He pushed his one-night stand away, wondering how to end this awkward parting, beyond simply walking out. ‘It’s absolutely nothing personal.’
‘Last night was your first time, wasn’t it?’ Arne asked, taking Elvis’ hand and placing it on his chest. Stroking his cheek.
Reaching out for his T-shirt, Elvis felt tears threaten. Torn between wanting to undo the past twelve hours and wanting to experience them all over again; needing to rush to the hospital to his mother’s bedside but not wanting to. Not again. He could barely face being taunted by the prospect of her end once more, only to find she would be patched up and sent home for more months of her suffering and his servitude. He was so utterly worn down by having to grieve on a fortnightly basis. And should she survive, he dreaded her seeing his guilty secret laid bare, as though an account of last night were written on his forehead – she had always been too astute, and he had never been able to ring-fence a part of his life that she couldn’t scrutinise and pronounce judgement upon, apart from work. He wished he could stay with this affectionate and beautiful stranger but knew he had to show up to the canal-side or face the wrath of the boss on his return.
‘Can I see you again, Dirk?’ Arne said, leaning in for another kiss.
Elvis backed away. Startled by the proposition. ‘Really?’ Saw the earnest intentions in the man’s face. Felt hope and something resembling happiness stir within him, like long-lost emotions buried beneath the strata of despair and responsibility that had settled over the years; suddenly excavated by a gay man he would never have believed he’d be attracted to and whom he knew absolutely nothing about. ‘Er … I’ve got to go.’
‘How is she?’
The first question he asked as he walked briskly in the direction of the Victorieplein stop for the tram into town. Paying no attention to the faceless, almost suburban surrounds of Arne’s neighbourhood in Ijselbuurt. Only thinking of his mother.
‘You should be here,’ the carer said. ‘This is really above and beyond duty, you know.’
‘I’m sorry. Look, you said she was stable. Can you put the doctor or a nurse on? Please. I’ve got an emergency at work and it’s not like the first time she’s been shipped off to hospital, is it? Obviously, if Mum’s on death’s—’
But Mevrouw van Lennep wasn’t listening. Had she cut him off, the sour-faced old trout? No. There was the sound of rustling at the other end. A younger woman’s voice. Kindly.
‘Hello, Dirk. May I call you Dirk? I’m Dr Mehmood. I understand that you’re Femke’s son and next of kin. Is that correct?’
‘Yes. Please, how is she?’
‘She’s not very well, I’m afraid. We’ve got her breathing under control, but the problem is that she has aspiration pneumonia because of her swallowing difficulties. It’s common in cases of advanced Parkinson’s.’ There was a flick and rustle of paperwork, just audible above the jaunty, tinkling bell of the tram. ‘I see she’s been admitted three times when she’s suffered this build-up in her lungs due to the dysphagia.’
‘Yes. Is she awake? Can I speak to her?’
‘Well, wouldn’t you rather come to see her?’ Disbelief and judgement in the doctor’s voice.
‘I’m a policeman. I’ve got to attend a murder scene.’ Checking around the tram to see if anybody was eavesdropping on the conversation, Elvis wondered what these people, going about their daily business, would make of him, if they knew the other end of the conversation. He cringed inwardly. Knew exactly how it seemed. He was a first-rate shit and a terrible son.
‘I see.’
Judging by the tone of her voice, this doctor really didn’t see at all. ‘Well, like I say, we’ve got everything in hand for now. But your mother is very frail. Very frail indeed, Dirk. Things can change quickly, I’m afraid.’
There was a pregnant silence, during which Elvis could hear hospital noises in the background. Beeping. Telephones ringing. Nurses’ chatter. Tannoy announcements.
‘I’ll be over as soon as I can. Maybe in as little as an hour, if I can manage to hand over to my colleague. I’ve been working on surveillance all night. I didn’t get—’
‘If there are changes, we’ll call.’
As his cheeks caught fire, broadcasting to the whole of Amsterdam that he was morally bankrupt, selfish, bordering on sociopathic and the worst child in the world, who had in fact been luxuriating in all sorts of hedonistic self-indulgence for the greater part of the night, rather than working on ‘surveillance’, the doctor was abruptly replaced by Mevrouw van Lennep again.
‘You’ve got a bloody cheek, Dirk. I’ll stay here another hour and then I’m off. I’ve got my cats to feed. My shift finished twenty minutes ago! You were supposed to be back to take over! You promised. I don’t get paid enough for this and I’ve got my own life, you know. I live to work. I don’t work to live. It’s fine for you with your respectable job and your government pay and pension and paid holidays. But I rely on you! I said I’d look after your mum nights, when you’re working on whatever it is you’re working on. And you said you’d pay me double my hourly rate. And you said you’d not let me down. Well, you’re letting me down, Dirk. And you’re letting your mother down!’
Silence. She had hung up.
Sighing, he visualised his mother, hooked up to all of those machines. A diminutive figure, growing weaker by the day. But tenacious in spirit. What would she say, if she knew what he’d done? She’d slap his face and tell him his father and grandparents would be spinning in their graves, in all likelihood.
He ignored the text from Arne. Sweet nothings, glowing on his screen. Jesus. What had he started?
‘That was a bloody long twenty minutes,’ Marie said, staring pointedly at her watch. Squatting by the body, with her digital camera hanging around her neck.
‘Mum’s taken a turn for the worse,’ he said, digging his hands deep into his new leather jacket. At his feet, a young man, already grey and ghoulish-looking, was sitting stiffly against the side of a car by the canal’s edge. Staring blankly at the opposite bank of the Keizersgracht. A pool of vomit beside him. ‘Bet she looks better than this poor sod, though.’
‘You should be with your mum. Go to her! Go on. I’ll cope.’
‘She’s fine for now. I’ll go in a minute.’ The guilt pushed down on his shoulders, forcing his hands even further into his pockets.
In his peripheral vision, beyond the fluttering police tape and uniforms trying desperately to keep the overzealous pedestrians away from the scene, he recognised Marianne de Koninck’s white forensics van approaching. Good. As soon as the body was carted off, he could probably make a case for slipping away to the hospital for a bit.
‘How long have you been here?’ he asked, yawning.
Marie snapped a close-up of the dead man’s face. The flash highlighted the purple-blue cyanosis on his lips and earlobes. ‘I’d only just arrived when I called you.’ She changed position and snapped again. ‘A dog-walker called him in. People have been trudging past all morning, but you know what it’s like. If you see someone slumped against a car and a pool of sick on the floor, the last thing you’re going to do is start poking around.’
‘Good Samaritans are hard come by in the city.’
‘I’ll say.’
Squatting beside her to get a better look, he grimaced and winced. Feeling his acrobatic debut performance in the bedroom with another man register just about everywhere below the waist. ‘I’m stiff as a board,’ he said. ‘This undercover shit is killing me. Too many late nights. Too much sodding dancing.’
Chuckling, Marie nudged him in the ribs. ‘And to think you’ve been bragging for years about how you’ve got two left feet and hate nightclubs. Van den Bergen knew exactly which buttons to push! Ha. You can’t fault the old bastard for having a perverse sense of humour.’ Narrowing her watery blue eyes, she paused. ‘You’ve changed,’ she said.
Elvis blushed. ‘No I haven’t. What makes you say that?’
‘You’ve lost weight. Your hair’s trendy, all of a sudden. You used to look like a Nineties throwback who had been shrunk in the wash. Now you’ve got new cool clothes – I hope you’re putting the receipts in as expenses.’
‘You bet, I will.’
‘My God. I’m not sure we could even legitimately call you Elvis anymore.’ She tugged at her greasy red hair. Her face crumpled into full-blown mirth.
‘Laughing at the dead?’ Marianne de Koninck’s voice resounded behind them. Business-like. Almost manly. Unforgiving.
He turned around, feeling too small and naff and parochial for his stylish leather jacket and new designer sneakers. Caught sight of the chief of Forensic Pathology’s solemn po-face and almost saw a disapproving Van den Bergen in those hollow runner’s cheeks and that over-worked-out neck.
‘No, Marianne. It’s—. We’ve—. Tell her, Marie.’
Marie ogled her scuffed green suede boots studiously. ‘Jeroen Meulenbelt. Just turned twenty-one yesterday. His ID is still on him. Nothing has been stolen. His vomit reeks of chemicals and I found this –’ she waved a baggie of crystals in the air ‘– on his person.’
‘Definitely not a robbery,’ Elvis said, wanting desperately to contribute something. ‘Sounds like an OD of sorts, like the others.’
Marianne de Koninck held her hand out for the baggie. ‘I’ll have it analysed. If it turns out this poor kid had lead poisoning like the others, we’ll soon see if it’s the same batch. Van den Bergen called me last night to say this meth is coming from Mexico. The experts in Prague were able to pinpoint it precisely as the work of the Coba cartel that operates out of the Yucatan Peninsula.’
‘Coba?’ Elvis asked. ‘Mexico? But every dealer I’ve managed to chat up has been banging on about some Czech called Nikolay.’
‘Speak to Van den Bergen,’ de Koninck said, unceremoniously shooing them both out of the way.
‘And the only other name I’ve heard dropped – and this was from one of my informants who approached me while I was undercover,’ Dirk said, ‘has been Stijn Pietersen.’
De Koninck rounded on him, pushing him up against the side of her white van. ‘You what?’ Her sharp gaze almost filleted the details from him before he could speak. ‘Say that again.’
‘Stijn Pietersen.’
‘The Rotterdam Silencer? The bastard who planted a bullet in Van den Bergen’s hip and ran Europe’s underworld?’
‘Well, I guess so,’ he croaked. ‘But that was over a decade ago, wasn’t it?’
She removed her muscled forearm from his throat. ‘I thought he was in prison.’
‘So did I,’ Marie said.