The Wrong Girl (38 page)

‘Yeah,’ said Van der Berg. ‘And lots of other people too. Do you want—?’

‘Shut up, Dirk,’ Bakker told him.

The detective stood there on his flat feet, lost for words.

‘This . . .’ Bakker said, finger jabbing at the screen. ‘Barbone wasn’t the only visitor.’

She’d gone right back to Henk Kuyper’s arrival. They watched him turn up. What looked like a difficult conversation.

‘What the hell was Kuyper doing here?’ Bakker wondered.

Then Smits’s phone call.

‘Get this emailed to my office,’ Fransen ordered. ‘Technical can take a look. Maybe we can work out what they were saying . . .’

‘He wrote something down!’ She found the sequence. Smits taking out a pen and a notepad. Scribbling a few words. Handing over a single sheet. ‘That’s what Kuyper wanted. That’s where he’s going.’

The image was so indistinct. She took a photo with her phone then sent it back to Aisha in Marnixstraat. Thought again and ran through the sequence, snapping it as a video. Sent her that too. Perhaps they could recreate something from the movement of Smits’s pen or arm or . . .

Three scene of crime officers had turned up alongside the AIVD crew and were looking at the body on the floor.

‘I’m running this operation,’ Fransen insisted. ‘You wait on my say-so.’

‘This is a murder,’ Van der Berg cut in. ‘And you’ve got our best homicide detective suspended. Back off.’

She took a step towards him.

‘I said back off!’ he yelled.

‘Dirk,’ cut in the lead scene of crime man.

‘What?’

‘We don’t work when people are shouting. Can you shut up or what?’

Bakker went out into the street and called Aisha.

‘I need you to look at those photos I sent you straight away . . .’

‘I am looking at them,’ the forensic officer came back.

‘And?’

‘And what? You didn’t tell me what you were looking for.’

‘He scribbled something on a pad. I want to know what it was.’

A long moment then Aisha said, ‘Sorry. You can’t even see the words from this angle.’

‘You can see the pen. Can’t you work out what he was writing from that?’

Aisha sighed and said, ‘I perform science, Laura. Not magic.’

Bakker swore.

‘Find the pad he used,’ Aisha suggested. ‘See if he pressed hard enough to make a mark on the page beneath. Bring it in anyway . . .’

Back inside and she started sifting through the burned papers by the filing cabinet. There was only one notepad there. It was a charred mass of burned paper and metal spiral ring. Nothing easily recoverable.

She sent Aisha a photo of that.

‘Sorry,’ came the reply. ‘This will take time. If we get there at all.’

‘I don’t—’

‘Enough,’ Aisha snapped. ‘I’ve got Vos on the other line bleating on about his problems.’

Fransen was still arguing with Van der Berg. Within earshot.

Bakker moved to the door.

‘Vos is suspended,’ she said.

‘Got to run,’ Aisha told her. ‘Bye.’

‘Get in there,’ the man with the dreadlocks told her.

The bag was open on the floor. Big enough for her twice over. She saw they’d put pillows in there and a blanket and didn’t know whether that was good or bad.

‘Come on,’ he said and shook his head, the long dark locks swinging from side to side. ‘They told me you could be a little bitch. Not now, kid. Just get in. We’re not going far. After all your games . . .’

He bent down and peered into her face.

‘The boss man told me. You don’t get the chance to run away again. In the bag. Or else.’

Then he pulled something out of his pocket. She saw it was a long, clean bandage, the kind they had in the medicine chest at school. Before she could speak he’d wound it round both his hands, pulled it over her open mouth, gagged her with the thing tight between the teeth. The dry fabric made her choke for a moment.

He pushed her towards the open holdall.

Natalya got down on her knees on the blanket inside. Twisted round. Sat for a moment. Then lay down.

‘Good girl,’ he said. ‘Won’t be long.’

Then she saw the zip closing and her little world turned dark.

Monster.

No room for it here. No space at all.

His second cup of coffee was going cold. The dog was getting bored playing with the bone. Bert had put music on the sound system in the Drie Vaten. Vos hated when he did that. He liked to pick what he heard. Not have it chosen for him. And Golden Earring really didn’t match the mood.

The red dot hadn’t shifted for twenty-five minutes. He’d nagged Aisha to check the system was working. She insisted the bug was where it said. And that wasn’t right. He’d already zoomed in on the map and worked out the cafe where she must have gone. Not somewhere he knew.

But there was a name and when he looked it up there was a phone number too. Getting desperate he called, described Hanna, short brown hair, glasses, asked if she was still there.

‘What is this?’ the man on the end of the line asked. ‘An answering service?’

Then put the phone down.

Vos led Sam back to the bar where Bert started clucking over him. The dog barely noticed when he slipped out of the door and hailed a cab passing slowly beneath the bare lime trees in Prinsengracht.

Ten minutes along the canals and he was there.

He checked the phone again. The dot still hadn’t moved. Talked to Aisha once more. Something was happening with the Kuyper case and AIVD.

‘Smits, the booking agency man, got shot, Vos. They think this terrorist did it. Henk Kuyper had been there too.’

He tried to think that through.

‘Also we’re not supposed to be talking, are we?’ she added. ‘You’re sure you set it up right like I showed you last night?’

She’d slipped him the satnav tracker outside the Drie Vaten after De Groot briefed her. Taking care to make sure no one saw her leave Marnixstraat and head out into the dark. It was vital AIVD, more than anyone, didn’t understand he was still inside the case.

‘I did just what you said. I’m here. Right where the dot’s showing. I can’t see her anywhere.’

She did something on the system. He looked at the phone again. It had zoomed right in to the cafe.

‘That’s as near as it gets,’ she said. ‘If you can’t see her now I can’t help.’

Vos looked at the screen and how it corresponded to the layout of the place then went in.

There was a pathetic, dried-up geranium in a dusty pot on the window ledge by a table. Two cups of coffee still on it. One of them with lipstick round the rim. One just marked with a brown stain.

He reached over and rummaged beneath the dying leaves.

The black plastic bug sat there among the roots.

‘Found her?’ Aisha asked.

‘Not exactly,’ Vos said then went back into the busy street, looked around, saw nothing.

Hanna stood outside the block in Spooksteeg then drew back the jumper from her wrist and looked at the numbers there, scrawled in ballpoint. A code for the door. A second set of numbers for the lift. Three floors up, straight into his living room.

She’d watched him key in those numbers. Written them down in his bathroom after he branded her. But now she didn’t need them so she pressed the bell, felt the wound on her back sting and waited. That mark would never go away. She’d wear this man’s initials for the rest of her life.

Soon she was upstairs. Foreign music playing gently from somewhere. He was alone on the sofa. In a suit for once. The place didn’t smell of sweat or cologne. Cem Yilmaz looked . . . businesslike. Another side to him. One she hadn’t seen before.

‘You’ve got the money?’ he asked as she walked in.

She nodded.

‘I need to see it,’ he said.

‘Why?’

He shook his head and squinted at her for a moment.

‘Because of what you are. I get cheated from time to time. This doesn’t sit lightly on me. Or those responsible.’

She opened the green holdall and took out Renata Kuyper’s DKNY shoebox. The sign on the label on the side said it was for a pair of girl’s trainers. Almost two hundred euros.

Yilmaz opened the lid and looked at the carefully stacked bundles of notes. Then flicked through them, checking they were all real.

‘This is good. We need trust between ourselves. For the years to come.’

He didn’t need to go to the drawer. The money was stacked neatly on the desk. Green one hundred euro notes. She’d never touched one before.

‘You take this,’ he ordered. ‘You find your girl. Tomorrow, when things are back to normal, we talk about how matters stand between us. What work you’ll do.’

She blinked.

‘I thought we’d agreed what work that was.’

‘We did.’ Cem Yilmaz smiled. ‘It’s whatever I ask.’

He gestured at the money. She put it into the bag, carefully stacking it inside.

‘Why do you look different?’ he asked. ‘Those glasses.’

‘I don’t want the police to follow me.’

‘What if he knows what you look like?’

She took out her phone and showed it to him.

‘This is how he knows me.’

Yilmaz grunted something. Then added, ‘In future you don’t change your appearance unless I say so. This . . .’ He came over and his vast hand went to her head. Roughly. Then he fingered her hair as if he was buying it. ‘Blonde’s better. Men desire it more. When you go back to work you’ll dye it again. And let it grow.’

Hanna hesitated for a moment then said OK.

‘We’re finished here now,’ Yilmaz told her.

She bounced the heavy bag on the end of her arm.

‘Don’t you want to know where?’ she asked. ‘Or when?’

‘I want to know nothing,’ he snapped. ‘Why would I? I’m the banker here. Nothing more. You understand?’

He gripped her hard by the right shoulder. Squeezing on the wound, the signature he’d left in her flesh.

She winced. Not as much as he liked. So he squeezed harder. She felt blood start in the healing scab. Finally couldn’t stop herself whimpering with the pain.

‘Good,’ he grunted. ‘You understand. Go now. Be here tomorrow morning. Ten o’clock. Then we discuss what comes next.’

Bakker took Van der Berg to one side in the doorway of Smits’s office. The place was starting to smell, of smoke and blood and the chemicals forensic used. Mirjam Fransen and her people were getting frustrated. The technicians were settling in for the duration.

‘Is there something you’d like to tell me?’ she asked.

He shuffled on his big black shoes.

‘About anything in particular?’

‘About Vos.’

He glanced at Fransen, talking quietly down her phone.

‘Not really.’

‘Dirk . . .’

He sighed. A long, deep, familiar sound.

‘Later. OK? We’ve enough on our plate.’

She’d phoned back to Marnixstraat again and got nothing but evasion.

‘So he’s put himself out on a limb? To try to get this ransom paid separately?’

Van der Berg nodded at the AIVD crew. His finger went to his lips.

‘Why am I the last to know about everything?’ she wondered.

‘Shall we kind of . . . slide out of here? I could really use a . . .’

‘Coffee,’ she interrupted.

‘Coffee,’ he agreed.

They walked down the alley without a word. Found one of the chain cafes on Damrak. Two cups of cappuccino and Van der Berg got stuck into a cinnamon bun too.

Bakker had been working on her clumsiness of late. It had become something of a Marnixstraat legend. That didn’t stop her upending her coffee as she gestured with her hand. Hot liquid spilled everywhere.

‘Damn!’ she yelled.

Van der Berg was there in an instant, mopping up with napkins.

‘This is very hard,’ she complained.

‘Carrying a cup of coffee? Just a case of practice.’

‘I meant being kept in the dark.’

He dumped the napkins then waved the sticky bun around.

‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘I suppose it is.’

They could see down the alley. The AIVD crew had come outside. Two or three were smoking. Mirjam Fransen was on the phone again. Looking madder than ever.

‘Whatever Vos is up to I hope he’s having more luck than us,’ Bakker moaned.

Centraal station. Ten minutes to twelve. Vos walked there, hands in pockets, head down, trying to think.

She’d called him twenty minutes before. Said nothing except that she’d be outside where the trams stopped. He wasn’t to come near. They communicated by phone. That was all.

The thought of dealing with a ransom drop here filled him with despair. A quarter of a million people passed through Centraal every day headed for the train and metro lines, the trams and buses. The sprawling red-brick building, a hundred and twenty years old, was a Flemish leviathan of towers and crow-stepped gable roofs, a warren of halls and tunnels, platforms, shops, offices. Almost a small city in itself.

Hanna Bublik was where she said, out in the cold bright day. The green holdall on her right arm. A smaller bag on her left. She’d changed too. The black jacket was gone like the long blonde hair. In its place a plain brown coat. She looked even more like a teacher or office worker.

He walked past her and went to stand by the ticket machines.

Then he phoned.

‘Let’s keep this brief,’ she said. ‘He’s supposed to call any minute. You didn’t bring anyone, did you?’

He groaned.

‘Just me. Like I said. Is that so hard to believe?’

She was watching him from the tram stop. Glancing round everywhere too.

‘You’re so desperate to be trusted, Vos. Someone must have really let you down once upon a time.’ A pause then she added, ‘Or you did that to them.’

‘Probably both,’ he remarked.

‘I’m sorry about that little toy you planted on me. I hope it wasn’t expensive.’

He muttered something under his breath then said, ‘Have you got everything?’

She raised the green holdall.

‘Is there any point in asking where you found the rest?’

‘None at all.’ She stood back as a bus lurched towards her. Then checked her watch. ‘I’ll call you when I hear something.’

Vos bought himself a coffee from a stall. Thought about how he’d handle this from the other side. They had to assume she was being watched even if she didn’t know. A simple hand-off – go to the man in black, give him the bag – wouldn’t work.