‘So you’re the hotshot?’
Station Chief Wieland Stuppor is a single syrupwaffel away from a major coronary event.
And the fact that Jaap’s been parachuted, almost literally, into his island fiefdom doesn’t seem to be helping much.
They’re outside the island’s station, a building Jaap has yet to set foot in, but he can tell from where he’s standing that it’s little more than a converted bungalow with a blue POLITIE sign tacked on to the wall.
The night is cooler here than the sweltering density of Amsterdam. The welcome too is turning out to be downright frosty.
‘Inspector Rykel,’ Jaap says, holding out his hand.
Stuppor doesn’t take it. He has a face like a statue from an island thousands of miles away in another ocean. An island, Jaap remembers, where the population were so smart they used up all the resources available to them and ended their genetic legacy by killing each other off completely. Jaap imagines the last one alive, howling into the darkness on an island devoid of food, and with no trees left to build an escape raft.
‘I’ll need everything you’ve got so far,’ he says, retracting his unshook hand.
Midnight can’t be far away and he still doesn’t know where he’ll be sleeping. Stuppor stares at him for a moment then nods him inside. Jaap follows, past the front desk, which isn’t manned, and into the main room at the back. Three more desks – two of which are being driven by uniforms – and morgue-like strip lights that hang from the ceiling and illuminate the general air of decay.
Through a door is Stuppor’s office, which looks out onto the car park at the back and two cones of light shining down the wall of a building on the far side. They go in and Stuppor settles behind his desk.
Jaap looks around for something to sit on.
He’s somehow not surprised when he comes up with nothing.
This is just petty.
Then again, he figures there’s a reason Stuppor’s ended up in charge of an island where birds outnumber the population ten to one. Not that he really knows anything about the place; he just assumes from what little he’s seen of it in the last few hours that it probably is the kind of terrain where wildlife makes a bigger contribution to the carbon cycle than humans.
‘Here’s what we know—’ starts Stuppor.
Jaap walks out. He selects the free chair, which happens to be at the furthest desk, and drags it across decaying lino the colour of used dishwater. One of the men, heavily tanned and not looking like police at all except for the uniform, jerks off a bit of air and nods his head towards Stuppor’s office.
As Jaap tries to get it through the narrow doorway he gouges the door frame with a chair leg. Dry paint flakes off, showering the floor.
‘Oops,’ he says, positioning it opposite Stuppor’s desk.
He sits down.
‘You were saying?’ he prompts. He wishes he had a syrupwaffel to offer Stuppor.
‘Body was discovered at 13:12,’ Stuppor says after a power-game pause. ‘Young couple going for a romantic stroll.’
From Stuppor’s tone it sounds like he regards a romantic stroll as somewhat akin to a full BDSM orgy with a hefty dose of transgender chem-sex thrown in for good measure. He shuffles some paper on his desk, eventually finding what he’s after and holding it out to Jaap, forcing him to lean forwards.
It’s a transcript of the call, and a few sheets detailing the first officer to the scene’s notes. He glances through it before dropping it back on Stuppor’s desk.
‘Says here the victim was wearing a bracelet with the name “Heleen” engraved on it. Has she been ID’d yet?’
‘No. We’re checking that now.’
Jaap spots a map on the wall to his right and turns to scrutinize it. The island’s a thin, lazy sickle shape, one of a chain broadly mirroring the shape of the mainland. The west coast, where the body was found, faces out into the North Sea; Oost-Vlieland, the only ferry port, sits on the east coast, sheltered from the tide and prevailing winds.
‘How frequent are the ferries to the mainland?’
‘This time of year, every couple of hours.’
Given his perfunctory answers, Jaap feels like Stuppor’s not totally invested in the process.
‘Say the killer wanted to get across the island quickly, how long would it take for them to get to Oost-Vlieland?’
‘If they had a bike they could do it in about half an hour.’
‘By car?’
‘Visitors to the island can’t have cars, only residents are allowed them.’
‘And you’re sure it’s not a resident because …?’ asks Jaap. ‘Actually, what I’m more interested in are the people who were booked on the ferries set to depart after the body was found – where did you keep them?’
Jaap sees that it might not even take a syrupwaffel to do the business. He also feels that he’s getting to the bottom of Stuppor’s lack of co-operation.
‘OK, you’re telling me you didn’t stop the ferries,’ Jaap says, not even framing it as a question. Because he knows the answer, both to that and the reason for the warm welcome.
Nobody likes to be caught out on a colossal fuck-up.
Which is, Jaap can see, exactly what’s happening here.
The image of Kamp dying on the road with only one cuff done up makes a brief appearance, aligned with the word ‘fuck-up’. He pushes it aside just as Stuppor comes clean.
‘There was a ferry which departed at 15:00 for Harlingen. Unfortunately it wasn’t stopped,’ Stuppor says. ‘The person responsible has been reprimanded.’
Jaap decides he needs to check just how long the surveillance team lost sight of Kamp for.
‘Well,’ he says, getting up, ‘that’s good. Looks like we’re going to have some fun here. Where am I staying tonight?’
Stuppor smiles for the first time since Jaap met him. ‘Don’t worry, that’s all taken care of,’ he says, gesturing to the door.
The reason for the smile soon becomes obvious. Turns out he’s staying somewhere which doesn’t even hold one star.
The island’s cell block. Which contains two cells, both of them empty.
‘Tourist season,’ shrugs Stuppor as he shows Jaap to the nearest one, where a fresh set of towels is folded neatly on the solid bed. ‘The whole island’s booked out for the summer holidays.’
‘Thanks,’ Jaap says. ‘Looks comfortable.’