Kees stares at the foil blister pack.
There are ten individual blisters, and all of them have been punched out bar one.
He hates them, hates that he’s dependent on them to keep his own body from destroying itself.
But the alternative is … well, there is no alternative.
He also hates that they are in packs of ten. It makes no sense; seven yes, fourteen yes, but for fuck’s sake why do they do them in tens?
He pushes his finger under the last one, watches as the pill’s shape starts to form and then, as the foil splits, the pink pill itself emerges, like some sick alien life-pod.
He flips it into his mouth, the bitter pill, quite literally, bitter.
He upends the Coke he has clutched in his hand, downs the lot, and gives himself a bad case of brain freeze.
The bar’s quiet, dark and smells of exhaled alcohol and the ghost of dead cigarettes. It’s the ideal place to field calls. Which is what he’s doing, waiting for incoming.
They have a complicated system set up: he calls and leaves a message, then he gets a text message with a time to be at the bar and he has to confirm or deny to another number, via text. Then he deletes the text message itself.
At first Kees thought it overkill.
Now he’s worried it’s not overkill enough.
He finds his finger drumming on the bar’s surface, like a woodpecker on crack.
The strange thing is, he doesn’t remember asking it to do that. He tries to stop it. Nothing happens, the finger carries on – a touch faster, if anything. None of his other fingers are moving, he notices, it’s just the one. Now it’s going so fast it’s like a blur. Sweat oozes down his back, and his neck feels like a long thin pole, his head teetering dangerously on top. It’s taking all his concentration to keep it there, thousands of micro adjustments a second.
And his scalp’s shrinking fast.
The sound’s getting louder, he can hear it now, hear little else, and he glances round to check if anyone else is noticing, see if the bottles are shaking on their shelves, or jumping off to certain death on the floor below.
Is this it? he finds himself calmly wondering. Is this how it ends?
‘Hey, for you.’
The voice snaps him out of whatever it is he’s locked into.
He swings his vision back to his finger. It’s still, innocent, like it hasn’t moved.
The barman’s holding out a phone to him on an oversized curly cord, something uncomfortably umbilical about it.
He takes the receiver, the plastic slicked up with a sheen of sweat from the man’s hand, and steps round the corner, stretching the cord as far as it will go.
Suddenly he doesn’t know what to say.
‘We … we …’ he says.
‘We need to talk,’ Kees says. ‘Face to face.’
And hour and a half later Kees is scrambling down a tree-covered slope. It’s steeper than it looked from the top, and he slips, reaching out a hand to steady himself on a nearby trunk. The bark is rough and dry against his palm.
He’s in a wood outside Gouda, and in less than three hours is supposed to be gearing up for the job Van der Pol’s put him on.
Unless … he thinks as he reaches the bottom of the slope.
The ground’s covered in dry leaves, and he looks around, spotting the man leant up against a tree less than ten metres away, acting like it’s perfectly normal to be meeting like this.
Kees has not seen him for over a year, and he looks fitter, younger somehow. Looks like he’s taking good care of himself whilst Kees is just rotting away.
He steps over, the rustle and crunch of leaves almost deafening in the quiet wood.
‘Hey,’ Kees says. ‘Didn’t think you’d come.’
‘Oh ye of little faith,’ replies Station Chief Henk Smit, stepping away from the trunk. ‘But charming as this all is, I would like to know why it’s necessary.’
Not changed a bit then, Kees thinks.
A bird chirps behind him, a rapid-fire series of notes at the same pitch, the last one longer than the rest. It does it again. And again. For some reason it reminds him of a speeded-up version of Dirk’s scream as the secateurs plunged into his neck.
Kees thinks of his finger, drumming insanely.
‘I need out,’ he says.
Smit looks at him, eyes unreadable.
‘Suits you,’ he says. ‘The whole biker thing. Looks good. Earring’s a nice touch too.’
For a second everything around Kees seems to freeze. He feels empty, present, but only as an observer.
It feels good, like there is a respite from it all.
From life. His own life.
But then it all speeds up, anger surging, bubbling in his blood like a diver with the bends. He explodes forward, grabbing Smit and ramming him up against a tree.
‘This isn’t funny, you fucker,’ Kees screams in his face. ‘I’m the one doing this. I’m the one risking—’
Smit stomps on Kees foot hard and the pain makes Kees loosen his grip just enough for Smit to get free.
Before Kees can react he’s face down eating leaf, with Smit’s knee pushing into his spine. His right arm’s twisted up behind his shoulder blades, held there tight.
Oddly, Kees is finding it hard to breathe.
‘You’re getting soft,’ Smit remarks, voice steady, no emotion.
‘I need out.’
Smit releases his arm then stands up, lack of knee freeing up Kees’ breath.
But he doesn’t feel like breathing now. What he really feels like is crying.
Jesus.
Something crawls past his ear.
He rolls over onto his back and looks up at the branches clawing at the sky.
A lone raptor, wings outstretched, spirals upwards on a lazy thermal.
‘I don’t understand why you don’t just arrest him. Surely I’ve given you enough for that? Just arrest him and get it over with.’
‘Soon, but I need a bit more.’
‘So what’re you going to do, wait till he finds out who I am and kills me? Arrest him for that? Will that be enough for you to take him down?’
‘Kees, listen,’ Smit says. ‘I know it’s tough. You’ve done well so far, I just need you to stick with it a bit longer. A few more days.’
‘I could just walk,’ Kees says. ‘Walk away right now.’
Smit holds his hand out. Kees looks at it, then struggles up on his own. Smit inspects his palm, as if to see why Kees refused it.
‘A couple of days,’ Smit says, finishing the inspection and swinging his eyes back to Kees. ‘That’s all I’m asking.’
‘Then I’m out?’
The repetitive cry of the bird starts up again, piercing the quiet. Kees listens to it.
‘Then we’ll talk,’ Smit says.