‘So how long are you going to be there?’
Tanya’s on the phone, and her retinas are burning up.
Jaap called her whilst she was in the office, and, not wanting to have a conversation with a bunch of cops eavesdropping, she sought some privacy outside.
Where the sun is, hence the retinal damage.
‘Not sure,’ Jaap replies. ‘Won’t be that long if the station chief here has anything to do with it.’
‘Doesn’t like you?’
‘Understatement, Station Chief Stuppor’s a solid gold—’
‘Stuppor? Wieland Stuppor?’
‘Uh … yeah. You know him?’
‘He was my boss at Leeuwarden. He’s … well, you obviously met him. I think he had a thing for me but didn’t know how to show it. You remember that first case we worked on together when he came down and tried to take me back up as he hadn’t given me permission?’
‘He’s the one you cuffed and left in the snow?’
Tanya thinks back to that. Not her finest hour. But it had saved lives.
‘The very same. Send him my love.’
‘I’ll drop it into the conversation later. It’ll be fun.’
Hearing that name again reminds her of her years spent up north, when she was trying to make inspector. Those years are like a dream to her now, she was someone else back then, lost and scared. Scarred too.
Because of what Ruud Staal had done to her.
But she doesn’t want to think of the past now; she wants to think of the future.
A pang in her stomach reminds her she’s still not heard back from the hospital.
And that she’s not told Jaap about her visit earlier this morning.
‘You still there?’
‘Yeah, I’m here,’ she says.
‘I think we should come up to the islands sometime, once the baby’s born and settled in.’
‘I’d like that,’ she says, trying not to think of the hospital. ‘Yeah, let’s do that. Listen, I …’ she says before something chokes her voice off.
Just tell him, she says to herself.
‘Yeah?’
Do it. Do it.
‘Nothing, just I miss you.’
‘Miss you too.’
I should have told him, she thinks a few minutes later as she’s walking away from the police building.
Her phone buzzes and she checks the screen, thinking it’s Jaap calling her back. Like he’d been able to tell there was something wrong and he’s calling to find out what.
But it’s Harry Borst.
‘Turn round,’ Harry says.
Tanya turns.
‘Look up.’
She looks up the police building, instinctively going to where Harry’s office is on the third floor.
‘Higher.’
Then she sees him, standing right on the edge of the roof.
‘What’s up?’ she asks when she’s made it up there.
The roof’s flat, and the view out over the harbour is impressive, if not exactly beautiful. She can just see the top of the butt plug, glinting merrily in the sun.
‘Real operation’s on tonight, and I need you in the team.’
Tanya eyes him up. ‘So all that stuff about tomorrow?’
‘Bit of a diversion,’ he says. Something must have flown into his throat as he coughs a little.
‘You’ve got a leak,’ Tanya says.
‘Maybe,’ he shrugs. ‘Maybe not. Maybe fuck yourself.’
‘Good film,’ Tanya says. ‘I prefer the two it was based on though.’
Harry laughs. ‘You know, you’re the first person to get that reference. I’ve been using it for years and I think everyone so far just assumes I’m being an asshole.’
‘Surely not.’
‘Yeah, hard to believe.’
He turns to look out across the harbour. A large crane plucks shipping containers off the quay and places them onto the deck of a waiting ship with a kind of balletic delicacy.
‘So … I’ve got a small team working tonight, all people I completely trust.’
‘How come?’
‘You trust them all.’
‘I’ve borrowed them from stations all over, they don’t know anything about the operation. As far as they’re all aware it’s a training exercise they’ve been specially selected for.’
‘I got a call the other day,’ Tanya says. ‘They said I’d been specially selected for the opportunity to invest in some luxury flat development somewhere on the harbour front.’
‘I got one of those as well, think they overestimate how much we get paid.’
‘Mind you, this goes down right … who knows?’
His phone goes off, he feels like a slave to it. ‘So,’ he says, checking the screen, ‘you in?’
‘Sure,’ Tanya says, with a creeping sense that she should really be saying no. ‘When are we going?’
He looks at her, having to squint into the sun which is over her left shoulder.
‘Right now.’