He may be a Neanderthal but he’s true to his word. Because eighteen minutes after he’s made a show of throwing them out of his office, Tolhoek’s bike is pulling up at the exact spot he’d told them to wait. Which is under a flyover. Traffic’s rumbling overhead, freight trucks laden with shipping containers, but no traffic is on the road they’re next to.
‘The receptionist,’ he says once he’s killed the motor, ‘I think she reports on me.’
He hasn’t got off his bike, his feet only just touching the ground either side. It looks uncomfortable. And with his arms up on the high handles it also looks ridiculous.
‘Back to Van der Pol?’ Harry asks.
‘Yeah, thing is, second time I got out I wanted to go straight. But I was persuaded otherwise.’
‘Lucky we came along, this is your chance to do some good,’ Jaap says. ‘So tell me.’
‘About the guy?’
‘We’re not here for your life story, just the bit which coincides with the man in the photo.’
Tolhoek looks away, and for a moment Jaap thinks he’s about to gun the motor and ride off without saying anything.
‘I went down for that fucker, both times I was the fall guy for him. Van der Pol wanted to keep him out of jail so made me go instead. But I’ll tell you this, that guy is a nasty piece of shit. Like, seriously nasty.’
‘Name?’
‘I just knew him as Alex.’
‘Haanstra?’
‘Could be, I don’t really remember.’
Harry pulls out his phone. ‘Maybe a quick call to your parole officer will ease your memory?’
‘Jesus, you cops think you’re the good guys,’ he says, shaking his head. ‘You have any idea what it’s like to be trapped? Like really trapped so you have no choice? Of course you don’t, you—’
All of a sudden Harry’s a virtuoso violinist with a sad-clown face.
‘Fuck you,’ Tolhoek says when he notices.
‘You had something to say,’ Jaap says.
‘OK,’ Tolhoek says after a deep breath. ‘It was about six years ago, I was working in Eindhoven, enforcer for Van der Pol’s main drugs distributor there. It was a fairly new area and there was already an established dealer. But that never stopped Van der Pol, and we spent six months taking over. But the dealer wouldn’t give in, no matter how many of his people we persuaded to flip sides and join us.’
‘Nothing like loyalty, huh?’ Harry asks.
‘Van der Pol pays better than anyone else. You’re the guy on the street for some of these other dealers you’re not making a minimum wage most of the time. So someone comes along and offers you a choice – more money for yourself or a bullet in the back of the head? It’s a no-brainer. But the main guy’s stubborn, wants to maintain control, so I’m told we need to persuade this guy to step aside. Van der Pol calls me to a meet just outside of town where he introduces this Alex guy. Tells me I’ve got to go with him, and that I’m to take orders from him. So I have to spend the day with him, and really he’s freaky.’
‘Freaky how?’
‘Like … I dunno. There’s something not right about him.’
‘This is coming from a two-time convict.’
Tolhoek gives him the finger. Harry smiles.
‘Freaky in that there’s this kind of stillness about him. Anyway, Alex seems to know where the dealer’s gonna be, we go to this shit-hole flat out in Haarlem. Turns out the dealer’s visiting some girl he’s got hidden from his other girl, and we walk in on them. He’s banging her up against the worktop, she’s bent forward over it taking a line up her nose and he’s got his tracksuit trousers down by his ankles. And he’s going at it like double speed, it looked like a cartoon, all blurred and stuff. There’s some loud music on so he’s not heard us, he was pretty into it, y’know? And Alex looks around, gets a wooden spoon from a container by the stove, and walks right up to him, jabs it up the guy’s ass.
‘My brother used to work at an abattoir down in Tilburg, he took me around it once, showed me the whole thing, and I tell you, the way that guy screamed reminded me of that. So, Alex makes him get dressed and we take him for a ride, out to these playing fields. The whole time Alex is kind of … I dunno. It’s like he’s really still, but wired at the same time. We drag this guy out, there’s no one around, and Alex tells me to have a go at him, just rough him up a little.’
‘Which you did,’ Harry says.
‘You want my help or not?’
‘Carry on,’ Jaap says.
‘I start, nothing serious, just a couple of hits, you know? But I kind of sensed something weird and I turn round and I find this guy is filming me on his phone. I mean, is he fucking stupid or what? That’s evidence. So I tell him to stop filming. He pulls out a gun and tells me to keep going. Tells me to make the guy bleed. So I give the guy a couple more hits, like this guy’s a piece of shit anyway, not like he’s some civilian, and then I stop. Alex is still filming, and he tells me to carry on. The thing is, as I’m doing it I see that he’s really filming me, like he has the phone aimed at my face.’
Another truck rumbles overhead. It seems to snap Tolhoek out of his story.
‘Then what?’
’Then he told me to kill him. He wanted me to strangle the guy. I told him to go fuck himself and he put the gun right up by my head. And the whole time he’s still filming. And he’s got this weird look on his face. Creepy, just really, really creepy.’
‘So did you do it?’ Harry says.
Tolhoek swallows, looks away. ‘Nah, I got lucky. A couple of cars turned up, turns out it was a well-known dogging site, so Alex had to put his gun away. But you know what? If they hadn’t, and I’d’ve refused to kill the guy, I’ve no doubt he would have pulled that trigger.’
Traffic overhead has slowed over the last minute or so; now there’s a truck stopped right above them. A waterfall of exhaust fumes starts to choke them. Jaap’s phone goes off, he sees it’s Arno. He takes it.
‘You need to get back here,’ Arno says. ‘We’ve found HelpingHandz was talking to someone else too.’
‘You know who?’
‘Not yet, Roemers is working on it.’
‘I’ll be there in fifteen. Right,’ Jaap says to Tolhoek, ‘how do we find this guy?’
Tolhoek shakes his head. ‘I don’t know, I’m not in the loop any more. I just front the window business. But one thing I heard was that Alex no longer works for Van der Pol.’
‘Where’d you hear that?’
Tolhoek shrugs. ‘I dunno, a rumour, I can’t remember where.’
‘That’s pretty unusual, isn’t it?’ Harry says. ‘Knowing how Van der Pol operates, not many people tend to leave. You being a good example.’
The traffic above starts to move, the truck lurches into gear and moves off.
‘I don’t know what to tell you,’ he says. ‘That’s what I heard.’