Who is he? Jaap thinks as he opens the door onto the roof and is blinded by the sun, a half-circle cut by the horizon, hanging right in front of him.
He steps into it, then turns north, walking to the edge, hoping that being out here will clear his mind. The air’s humid, evaporation from the canal below managing to reach five storeys up, making his skin feel sticky. All summer it’s there, like a form of tinnitus, a background fug which you get used to but which you suddenly notice at random points throughout the day.
He’s been working like someone possessed, getting the team onto the killer’s image. They’re still below, working phones, the internet, trying to piece together just who this man is.
The sun’s sinking fast, basting the sky a golden-yellow. An invisible hand smears a few thin clouds above him.
Amsterdam’s his city, he knows her streets and canals like they’re part of his biology, almost as if he were part of her and she part of him.
The same way that he’s a cop.
It’s part of him.
A plane banks in the sky, the wings suddenly glowing as it tilts and catches the last rays. He watches as it circles south.
The thought strikes him that he’s been an inspector all these years for the same reason the drunk drinks, the junkie jabs the needle into their arm and the sex addict chases those blinding moments of nothingness at orgasm – obliteration of the ego, however transient.
He glances across the tops of buildings, spotting Bloemgracht where their houseboat is moored, and further up on the corner the small café they sometimes go to for breakfast, on the odd occasion they both have a late start.
The sun’s slipping away now, abandoning the world, light giving way to dark.
The baby’s going to change things, he doesn’t know how he’s going to feel, how it’ll be. And it’s all mixed up with Floortje’s death. He’d been a father for a brief few months which had ended in tragedy.
For a moment he feels giddy, like all his life he’s been searching for something, though he doesn’t know what.
It had taken him to Kyoto, the hours he’d spent there driving himself crazy with obscure Zen koans set for him by Yuzuki Roshi, which had eventually seemed to pay off. He’d come away from Japan with what seemed a better understanding of himself, of life.
Floortje’s death shattered that particular illusion.
He relives that night, staring at the flames of a burning boat, Floortje dead, the realization that he didn’t understand.
He still doesn’t understand.
A craving for Arno’s home-grow hits him with a sinuous intensity.
Down below a tram screeches to a halt; Jaap suddenly realizes it’s fully dark. He glances over the edge, sees a man lying on the tram tracks – a metre more and the tram would have hit him. Several people cluster round, trying to work out what’s going on.
He turns away and starts back towards the door when a thought mushroom-clouds in his head.
Pieter Groot was in police custody, he thinks. So how did the killer know where to find him?
He’s standing still now, the question like an invisible wall he’s just walked into.
The night shudders around him.
How did he know?