Killers are like fruit.
At least that’s what one of Jaap’s early mentors had told him once when he was training to be an inspector.
They’d been working a case where a male prostitute had been hung from a branch, a rope tied round his feet, and his throat cut so he’d bled out like a slaughtered pig. The killer had actually captured most of the blood in a series of buckets and taken them from the scene. One of the techs had mentioned they’d had blood pudding and eggs for breakfast.
Jaap’s mentor had dropped his wisdom-pearl when they finally caught their main suspect, who – even when presented with some pretty solid evidence against him – maintained his innocence. His mentor had barrelled the guy into a cell, saying that like fruit, killers needed time to ripen. Which is where the metaphor had broken down a bit, as he’d gone on to say that, once ripened to perfection, you splattered them against the wall, their guilt oozing down for all to see.
Jaap thinks back to that day and wonders if it hadn’t been warning enough. Get out whilst you’ve still got your sanity, because clearly policing hadn’t done much for his mentor’s state of mind. It was only a few months later that a call had come in saying a man had been spotted naked, except for a pair of orange wraparound sunglasses, standing in Dam Square, his left shoulder twitching up to his ear seemingly at random. When Jaap turned up a huge group of tourists had been gathered round him, perhaps thinking it was some kind of performance art. Some had even thrown coins onto the ground in front of him.
When Jaap and a couple of uniforms had taken him, he was mumbling under his breath, eyes not seeing, and two days later he was signed off permanently for psychiatric reasons. He was, at least, given a full pension.
So now Vink’s in a cell, and Jaap’s letting him stew, rather than ripen.
Under guard.
He’s not having anyone else in this case commit suicide.
He’s in the main office prepping when Tanya calls to tell him she’s been discharged.
‘I’m just about to interview, I’ll pick you up as soon as I’ve finished.’
‘Really, I’m fine. I’ll get a cab. And I think they need the bed, there’s this nurse who keeps walking past and doing the oh you’re still here sort of look.’
‘Get their name, I’ll have them arrested. And I’ll send someone round—’
‘Jaap, I’ll get a cab. Least the department can do is spring for the fare. You go and get your guy.’
And she hangs up before Jaap can say anything else.
He grasps the handle and steps inside.
After dismissing the two uniforms and going through the prelims, Jaap starts by asking about Heleen.
‘I already told you I didn’t kill her or have her killed like you said. That’s crazy. I was trying to help her.’
‘Yeah, it’s true. You did say that before. But I’m not convinced.’ He pulls out a print-off of the email exchange, points to Heleen’s last email. ‘Read that out aloud.’
Vink hesitates then reads it out. ‘ “You shouldn’t be here, leave me alone.” ’
‘Which to me says that she doesn’t want your help.’
Vink stares at him across the steel-topped table, one hand cuffed to a low rail underneath the surface, his hollow cheeks and the dark rings under his eyes more pronounced by the overhead lighting.
‘She was a patient of mine,’ he eventually says. ‘I got too attached, which is why I went to Vlieland. I was trying to get her out of that cycle.’
‘The mutilation?’
‘That’s how I met her. I’d found her online, on a forum for people who were into that kind of thing. I got in touch with her and offered to help. She’d seemed receptive, you know? So we eventually agreed to meet and I started working with her, trying to get her to stop. A lot of these people have deep trauma in their lives, and the self-mutilation is a symptom of that. I can help them get to the bottom of it, help them see it for what it is, and move on.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ Jaap says, shifting through the file he’s brought with him on Vink’s background. ‘I must’ve missed the part where you spent years studying this. Like which medical school, that kind of thing.’
‘You don’t need to go to school to be good at something. Bit of paper showing you jumped through some hoops? Means shit in my world.’
‘Right,’ Jaap says, knowing that he actually sort of agrees. A bit of paper is no guarantee. ‘So you’re self-appointed. And self-taught.’
‘Fucking proud to be as well, that’s why I get results. I guide them through a healing process, which is unique for everyone.’
Vink uses his free hand to pull up the sleeve of his cuffed hand. Jaap sees the scars, thin lines all running in the same direction, from the inner elbow upwards, heading for the armpit.
‘This is my qualification,’ he says. ‘You got a problem, you’d rather go to someone who knows about it from a book and looks down on you, or someone who’s been through it and come out the other side?’
Vink’s not a fruit. And he hasn’t ripened. Or stewed. Or whatever.
In fact, once he’d got over the initial shock of arrest, the opposite seems to have happened.
‘And do you sleep with all the patients you manage to lure over the internet? Is that part of the healing process?’
Vink doesn’t answer, he just stares at Jaap, defiance in his eyes.
‘And these?’ Jaap pulls out the LSD tabs. ‘Is this part of your protocol as well?’
‘Some of these people have been to psychiatrists before and been given medicine which seriously fucks them up. It’s almost barbaric. This stuff?’ He points to the tabs. ‘Used right, this stuff can be seriously healing.’
‘So you let them trip out on acid and they get better?’
‘I’ve helped many people with this, so you can keep your condescension. Means nothing to me. I sleep at night.’
‘Just having these could be life, you get that right?’
Vink shrugs, like life’s part of life.
‘I didn’t kill Heleen. I haven’t killed anyone. You want to charge me with possession then go ahead, but all you’ll be doing is stopping me from helping other people.’
‘The problem is this: as we discussed earlier, you don’t have an alibi for Kaaren Leegte’s death because after leaving Vlieland you were staying at your cabin, and according to your statement you were there till I found you.’
‘I don’t even know this other girl you’ve talked about. But if you want to find out who killed Heleen then you should be looking for whoever was mutilating her. All along I thought she was self-harming, that’s what she told me, only I find out when we’re on Vlieland that she has someone do it for her. That’s the guy you should be looking for.’
‘He’s dead.’
‘What?’
‘The man who was mutilating her, Daan Brouwer, is dead.’
Jaap flips across a photo. Vink takes it in.
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yeah, he’s definitely dead.’
‘No, I meant are you sure that’s the man?’
‘Who mutilated her? Yeah, I’m sure. Why?’
Vink purses his lips, thinks. ‘Because I saw someone hanging around the cottage a couple of times, I assumed he was the one.’
‘What did he look like?’
Vink shrugs again. ‘Y’know, average. But there was something, one of his eyes was a bit weird.’
‘Weird how?’ Jaap asks, the whole room swimming in déjà vu.
Vink bends his head down towards his cuffed hands, and with a forefinger and thumb pinches together a bit of cheek and eyebrow, narrowing his eye.
‘Kinda like that? Like he’d got a bad cut and scar tissue built up.’
Jaap’s thinking hard. Then he gets it.
The man leaving the hospital room where Pieter Groot had bled to death.