The Devil's Playground (42 page)

rhythm of the city, the way the land seemed to pulse

up at you in the form of bridges, both a connection and a

disconnection, a link and a break. It was as if the streets were

nothing but an elaborate Rubik’s Cube, constantly shifting,

from the wide open Mojaves of the empty squares to the

sweetheart of the sudden darkness that surrounds you in the

smaller streets. He walked south, into the great commercial

district, past skyscrapers and smoked-glass office buildings,

the new face of the city, reflected endlessly in its mirrors

and distortions. Walking, walking, walking, all the while

soundtracked by the music pumping into his head, leaving

no room for wayward thoughts.

He watched the people swarm and ebb. Dressed in suits

and rags. Women so beautiful it broke your eyes. Men tall,

cold and professional. Bikes skidding across his line of

vision, trams hurding, cars puttering. There were so many

ways to get run over in this city, so many crisscrossing lines

of travel.

He noticed how he looked at women differently after

having been in the District. He didn’t like it, but he kept

doing it. Strange what shapes this city wrought upon you,

what subtle shifts and changes — as if everything was up for

sale, whispering in its alleys, ‘Everything is yours for a price.’

Or maybe the city had only made him realize that this was

the way he looked at women. The way all men do.

On the second day he walked west, into the old Jewish

Quarter, though there was not much left of it but tourism and

commemoration. He read the multilingual plaques, looked at

the stern monuments, their obsidian darkness a metaphor

for all that had occurred. The city itself was like a textbook.

A palimpsest of history, seen in its gables and arches, the

length of its canals, the monuments and squares that

described the spilling of the city from its centre into the

farthest reaches of the old marshland.

He sat in cafes, music affixed to his ears, and watched

stoned tourists stumbling about, serious strollers, the whole

mess of life, so colourful and different here. In London he

had stopped noticing. Here the world was born anew, each

small facet worthy of contemplation, even the taste of the

coffee or croissants, the way the lights of the restaurants

danced upon the roiling surface of the canals at night.

It was on the second day, in the Jewish Quarter, that he

began to realize he was being followed.

It wasn’t much. But attuned as he was, alert as he was, he

noticed the same man (had he seen him yesterday?), the same

man always there when he turned or stopped to light a

cigarette. Always too far for him to see the face. Only the

long black trenchcoat he wore, the battered biker boots and

constant cigarettes.

Jon tried to ignore him. Not to let fear get the better

of him. But it was there. Shooting through his veins. He

remembered what Suze had said and he wondered if he was

next. If this man had previously followed Jake and Beatrice

too, staking them out, getting their routines down.

He walked through the long streets, so much quieter

and sparser than back in the District, every now and then

stopping, looking behind him for a flash of black that told

him the man was still there.

He began to walk fast, as if something urgent was pressing

down upon him. He took as many turnings as he could find,

tracing squiggles and asymmetric loops that he hoped would

be hard to follow. He didn’t even stop to light cigarettes

now, just kept backing and double-backing, walking through

alleys and then turning on himself only to see the swish of

black behind a corner, the spiralling cigarette smoke creeping

from a blind alley. He began to run, carefully sideswiping

other pedestrians, frantically looking behind.

Every time he stopped, he saw the man, getting more

brazen now, not even hiding. And was that a smile on his

face?

Then the man started running towards him.

Jon sprinted across the canal, down an alley, heart beating

hard, sweat breaking out cold and clammy, hearing his pursuer’s

footsteps clicking on the cobblestones behind him.

Before long he realized that he was back in the District.

He ran past the girls behind glass, the small-fronted cafes,

not knowing which way he was going, thinking maybe that’s

better, maybe that’s the only way you can lose someone. He

doubled up an alley and stood in a small square. High

visibility. He got out of there quickly, looked back, didn’t see

anyone.

He didn’t stop though. He kept running through the alley

until he nearly slammed bang into the man in black.

He stopped just in time, slunk into a nearby doorway and

watched his pursuer scanning the square.

Jon smiled, watching the man’s head rotate, searching for

him. He got his breath back. Still he couldn’t see the man’s

face.

The man in black turned round.

Jon leapt into the doorway’s niche hoping he hadn’t been

seen. He could hear his heart beat thick and fast through his

body. He waited for the man to find him. To finish it all.

But he didn’t, and when Jon summoned up the courage

to look he saw the man disappearing into the square.

He quickly propelled himself out of the doorway and into

a group of sightseers, all the while keeping his eye on his

pursuer, now walking towards Nieuwmarkt. Jon pulled away

from the tourist pack and stood at the head of an alley. The

man in black turned left at the end. Jon ran the length of the

alley, came to a stop, saw the man walking down some stairs

into a basement below a tattoo parlour. He waited a couple

of minutes and then walked over, pretending to gaze at the

window display. He stared at the photos, canvases of flesh

still inflamed from the needle, pinned under the flashbulb

explosion of the camera. He thought about Kaplan’s story

about the wall of eyes. It made him feel dizzy. The window

display of flesh made him sick.

There was no sign on the door of the basement, only a

buzzer. Jon smoked a cigarette and waited across the street.

His pursuer still hadn’t come out. He checked his watch.

Took his wallet out, found Van Hijn’s card.

Jon and Van Hijn sat in the back of the Hieronymus Bosch

patisserie, staring out over the canal and the busy tramways

of Damrak. One wall of the establishment had been covered

with an immense reproduction of the artist’s famous triptych

and Jon stared at the ugly deformed creatures that populated

the mural as he waited for the detective to return from the

cake trolley. The house stereo was playing ‘Frankie Teardrop’

by Suicide, the pounding electric rhythm brutal and relentless.

He’d called the station and they’d told him about the

attack on the detective. He’d called the hospital only to be

informed that Van Hijn had checked himself out against

medical advice. He’d finally reached the detective at his flat.

Told him that he had to see him.

Van Hijn eased slowly into his chair. His movements were

careful and precise as if he were moving through a space

filled with invisible obstacles. Jon saw him wince when he

sat down, a slight upturn of his lip, a glazing of the eyes.

‘You okay?’ he asked, unable to think of anything else to

say.

‘I will be once I get some cake,’ Van Hijn replied.

Jon couldn’t wait. The onrush of information was too

much. He wanted to share his fears, hoping that they would

seem pathetic, dope paranoia, that kind of thing. He told the

detective about the testimony that Jake had left. The videos

hidden in the CD cases. He watched as the detective took it

all in, making the odd note. He told him about the Doctor,

the man who followed him, perhaps the killer. Van Hijn

nodded, not saying much, digesting the information. Jon

thought he’d congratulate him but Van Hijn just looked up,

tired and sick. ‘You know I’m off the case?’ he finally said.

Jon shook his head. He felt a sinking in his stomach.

‘You’re giving up?’

‘No. But things have changed. It won’t be as easy now.’

He crushed his cigarette. ‘I’ve been moved to a different

case. Trouble at the zoo.’

‘You’re joking.’ Jon felt his hopes drain away like the

coffee in his cup. Without the detective there was only him

and after outrunning the man that morning, Jon wasn’t all

that certain he could do it by himself. Or wanted to.

‘No joke. A couple of the zoo attendants are running their

own little side business. Opening up late at night. Apparently

people pay good money to watch them beat the animals.’

Jon stared at him.

‘Pay a little more and they give you a baseball bat and the

keys to the monkey cage.’ The detective coughed, stirred his

coffee.

‘What about the serial killer? The films? The case?’ Jon

said, leaning forward, trying to impose himself into the space

that had opened up between them.

Van Hijn shrugged. He understood Jon’s anger and

enthusiasm, saw himself, younger, in Jon. But he could also

see what it would lead to, the bitter disappointments and

sleepless nights.

‘I don’t know that I can be any more use, Jon. There’s

others now, fresh to the case, perhaps they’ll see something

I didn’t.’

Jon leaned back, grabbed his cup. The detective had

changed. Something had gone out of him since their last

meeting. ‘I don’t believe you’re giving up.’

‘I’m not giving up, Jon. I don’t have a choice any more.’

‘No?’

And Van Hijn didn’t quite know how to answer that.

Because there was always a choice. Was he running away

from the past again? The past that existed only in his head

but whose clutch was firmer than that of the present? He

thought about the films. A certain seductive symmetry in

that. He looked at Jon and felt envious of his vigour, his lack

of apprehension, the way he’d followed this through despite

all the warnings and obstacles. He was a different man from

the shambling wreck who had entered his office a couple of

weeks ago. Murder had made him a man, freed him from

the restraints he’d imposed on himself. A strange irony

indeed. ‘Maybe you’re right.’ He motioned towards the waitress

for another drink. ‘Perhaps I’ve just forgotten how to

live my life, in some way, perhaps that’s it.’

Jon stared at him. Had the detective changed so much

since their first meeting? ‘How do you deal with it?’ he said,

a question that he’d been asking himself ever since his

arrival in the city. He was curious to know what answers the

Dutchman had formulated during his time as a policeman

and he didn’t want him to let go, not so easily.

‘I don’t really know. I ask myself this question over and

over again and I come up with all sorts of answers, none

ultimately satisfying, of course. I ask myself how I should

react and when I weigh it up against how I do, I always find

it lacking.’

The detective looked up from his cheesecake, his eyes

locking on to Jon’s. *You know, you’ve got to stop every

now and then and say to yourself, this is the best moment

of my life up to now — it doesn’t get any better than this.

No, don’t laugh, I’m serious … you say it when you’re

listening to a song and the harmonies come in, in a way

you didn’t expect, suddenly flooding you with California

sunshine. Or when you bite into a piece of warm pastry, the

heady smell filling your nose and then the crisp, crumbly

texture and rich flavours that saturate your mouth … or

when you find a book you’ve been searching ages for… you

find it cheap in a discarded pile in the back of a secondhand

bookshop — you have to say it to yourself, “It doesn’t get

any better than this,” because if you don’t say it at those

moments, when are you going to say it? Those are the things

that count.’

‘Must be hard to continue.’

‘Yes, it gets harder but it’s also more of a reason to do it.’

Van Hijn lit a cigarette, taking his time, drawing the smoke

into his lungs. ‘Make lists, Jon. Write down your favourite

albums, your favourite books, the food you like eating most.

Write it down so that when you need it, it’s there.’

Jon looked at the detective and wondered whether he was

right. Perhaps he was. Maybe you needed to make a balance

book, the bad shit against the good. Tally it up. See where

that takes you.

They had another round of drinks and Jon told him about

the morning’s pursuit. The unlabelled basement buzzer. He

watched as the detective sat up, winced at the pain it caused

him.

‘I told you not to get involved.’

‘Nothing happened to me. I can take care of myself.’ Jon

looked up. ‘You know this place?’

Van Hijn nodded. ‘It’s a piercing parlour.’

‘Somehow that doesn’t come as a surprise.’

‘I was coming back from there when I was attacked.

Something doesn’t make sense. They’ve arrested some kids,