‘When I give the signal, knock,’ Maarten Minks said into his walkie-talkie, enjoying every terrifying, exquisite moment of this unanticipated foray into hands-on policing. This is how Van den Bergen must feel, he thought. I feel invincible. This beats the hell out of strategy meetings and press conferences. No wonder these hard-boiled old-school guys keep at it long after their marriages fail and their livers start to pack up.
He breathed in deeply, suddenly aware that his senses were sharper. Even the impressive brick-built Westerkerk opposite seemed statelier and somehow more solid. He imagined that he could hear the conversations between the tourists queuing round the block to gain entry to the Anne Frank museum. He could smell rain in the air.
The crackling message came back to him that the response unit was ready to go at his word, over and out.
At his word. As though he was some kind of demi-god, moving mortals around on the board in some heavenly game. And the mortal he was about to capture and punish was none other than Stijn Pietersen. The Rotterdam Silencer who had managed to beat a life sentence on appeal, thanks to some five-star legal shenanigans and perhaps even the odd greased palm higher up the food chain. The man who had merely assumed the new name of Nikolay Bebchuk and had continued to expand his criminal empire, killing Dutch kids from a safe distance with his shitty crystal meth; lurking several fathoms below the radar.
Until now.
Van den Bergen wasn’t going to get the Rotterdam Silencer this time around. He was. Maarten Minks. Excellent.
Minks felt certain that had he been wearing his heart-rate monitor, he would almost certainly be at his maximum 180 beats, now. Had he known that stakeouts would put his body through the paces as effectively as an hour on the treadmill in the gym, he might have opted to spend more time pounding the streets when he had joined the force straight out of university and less time preparing strategies and analysing policing trends for efficacy.
‘Hey, young man! What’s going on?’ an old woman asked, wheeling her bicycle along the Prinsengracht towpath.
Minks eyed her with suspicion. Could she be an accomplice? ‘Who let you beyond the cordon?’
‘There’s a cordon?’ She frowned. Her turkey neck wobbled with indignation. ‘But I live here.’
He pointed to the houseboat that was barely visible behind the display of pots and hanging baskets that dripped with petunias and geraniums. ‘You live here?’ Felt his gun surreptitiously. Just in case.
‘No, not this one,’ she said. ‘Next one along.’
Eyeing her sandalled feet and walking shorts, Minks reasoned that perhaps she wasn’t involved with an international trafficker, except by accident of geography. In her bicycle’s basket, she had a loaf of bread, a carton of caramel vla and a bunch of roses from the market. Definitely not the tools of the trafficking trade.
Turning to his men, Minks scowled. Spoke softly into the walkie-talkie. ‘I thought I told you to clear the damned area! Get her out of here!’
He focused on the chin of the disconcerted-looking woman, who was now all raised eyebrows and open mouth. Flashed his police ID. ‘I’m afraid you’ll have to wait further back on Bloemgracht until one of my officers gives you the all clear.’
With frustration mounting inside him, threatening to neutralise the insane, heady buzz, he shooed the old woman away. Took four deep breaths. Gave the word.
‘Knock!’
There was a sudden flurry of activity as two teams of five officers swooped down from the adjacent Bloemgracht and the Westermarkt bridge respectively onto Prinsengracht itself. As one co-ordinated organism, the first team approached the entrance to the houseboat on the canal’s edge. Swung a giant battering ram against the door, once, twice. Blasting the door almost off its hinges. The other men had the place surrounded; guns trained on the canal in case Pietersen opted to jump or had some other means of escape at the ready.
Minks could hear the search play out on his walkie-talkie. He took confident strides towards the houseboat, imagining what it would be like inside. The defeated expression on Pietersen’s face when he read him his rights.
‘It’s clear, sir,’ came the update, crackling along the airwaves.
Hardly bothering to keep his voice down as he spoke into the device, Minks felt suddenly as though his bright, bright morning had been enshrouded in dankest grey, snuffing out all the light and possibility and hope that the phone call from the lovely Georgina McKenzie had offered.
‘What the hell do you mean, it’s clear?’ he shouted. Marching along the gangway and into the houseboat.
It was small inside. Just one bedroom, a living room with a kitchenette at one end and a cramped bathroom. The whole place reeked of cheap floral perfume and cigarettes. On the sofa, there was a pillow with an indentation where a head had rested. A dishevelled blanket. An empty whisky glass. But in the bedroom, there were women’s things. Two sets of clothes. An overflowing ashtray. A long, broken nail next to a solitary photo – the only personal thing in the entire houseboat.
‘Come and take a look at the windows, sir. If you ask me, they’ve been glazed with bullet-proof glass,’ one of Minks’ men said, beckoning him back into the living room. ‘And there’s a really sophisticated alarm system rigged up. In fact, the bedroom is a zone in itself.’ He thumbed deadbolts that had been recessed into the architrave of the bedroom’s threshold. ‘It looks like whoever sleeps in here gets locked in. Bloody weird.’
But Minks was hardly listening to his uniformed officer’s observations. He was too busy staring at the single framed photo on the bedside cabinet. Two women. Both Black. One younger and lighter-skinned. The other, darker-skinned, overweight and clearly older. Both looking miserable as hell in each other’s company. Picking up the frame, he ran his thumb over the image of the familiar younger woman.
‘George McKenzie.’