The Wrong Girl (44 page)

The weapon he’d have to leave behind and that hurt too. Tucked inside a wheeled ski bag it was a Remington Modular Sniper Rifle, stolen from the hands of a dead US scout caught behind what passed for enemy lines during the 2010 assault on Marja in Helmand province. Smuggled out of Afghanistan to Yemen. Then to Barbone who’d passed it on that afternoon.

Never used except for practice when the two of them lived in Milan and would drive into the Valle d’Aosta to find a lone spot and take down chamois and deer.

Time to flee now. To regroup. To face the consequences when they reported back to command.

The weapon was state-of-the-art, deadly accurate, almost silent. It hurt that he had to leave the thing. When he left Amsterdam he’d change identity altogether. Become briefly a doctor. An anaesthetist who’d worked for one of the more famous hospitals in London.

His life, like the world, was built on lies. So many after a while they became inseparable from the truth, even for him.

All that was certain was history. It stood around him in Amsterdam. Reminded the man called Khaled – not his real name either – how little he could alter it by himself.

Finding the place he wanted he looked around, lit a cigarette in the dark.

The ski bag and the precious Remington he’d leave here. Then walk to the small hotel near the station, pick up a car as arranged.

An assignment finished. A job half-done. He loathed failure, in himself as much as others.

He was smoking in a small playground near a pissoir. The grand building next to him was still open. A restaurant busy with Christmas diners. A courtyard, a statue in it. One he knew. Another Dutchman who’d crossed the world hoping to own it. To rob those who preceded him of their identity and dignity. To rule like a master, given that role by God.

A name. He struggled for it.

Stuyvesant.

A grim, unforgiving man, no friend to the Jews either.

There was an irony, he thought then threw his half-smoked Marlboro into the child’s sandpit by his side.

Hanna Bublik didn’t go to see Renata Kuyper. She strode quickly through the city, into the red-light district, on to Spooksteeg.

One code for the door. One for the lift.

The ballpoint scribbles on her wrist had barely faded. Why should they? The last few days seemed like an age. But taken out of grim context they were nothing. To the world around her, to the ordinary people of the city, it was just Sunday to Thursday. A brief interval before the holidays, soon to be forgotten.

In Spooksteeg she looked up. A light at the window. No shapes moving there.

And if there were? If he wasn’t on his own as she prayed?

She stopped at the glass door and thought about that. It wouldn’t make any difference. The journey had started. Begun by someone else. Continued by Cem Yilmaz. No stopping it now.

A confident, arrogant man, he hadn’t changed the code and probably rarely did.

She pushed open the door and stepped inside. The place was hot on this chilly night, even in the lobby. She wondered what there was on the floors beneath his.

Hanna Bublik walked to the lift, checked the second code on her skin, tried that.

Listened to the gears and chains begin to whirr above her.

Would he hear too? And if he did would he think this was for him? Or whoever lived in the rooms below?

Pointless questions. Ones that could never be answered.

The lift came.

The door opened.

She stepped inside, keyed the code, pressed the button for the top floor. Pictured in her head the room into which the lift opened directly, straight into his home like something from a movie.

Gloves on. She took the weapon from her bag, checked it was loaded. Tried to remember the YouTube video on the web. The only pointers she had on how to use it.

The lift started up. She unbuttoned the brown coat then pushed the gun beneath the front.

And waited, breath short, mind fixed, intent, determined.

Renata bought in supper from Marqt. Seafood linguini. A bottle of white. Italian too though light on the alcohol. She couldn’t wean him off that straight away. But she could make a start.

With Saskia away they sat opposite one another at the dining table by the first-floor window. Christmas lights sparkling against the panes. Faces reflected in the glass. The tiny bulbs sent dots, red, green and blue twinkling over their features.

‘Early night,’ he said with a sigh.

She reached out and felt for his fingers.

‘Yes.’

For two months now she’d been sleeping in the spare room. Going in there after she thought Saskia was asleep, hoping the girl wouldn’t notice.

A stupid illusion. Of course she knew.

‘I’ll stay tonight,’ she said.

He put down his fork and the glass of wine.

‘Only if you want to.’

‘If I didn’t I wouldn’t do it.’

‘True,’ he agreed with a wry smile.

There were practical questions they had to face. To do with money. The future. On the walk back Henk had started to unburden himself a little. He’d been on a secret AIVD salary ever since he supposedly left his job. Most of the money she thought came from his father was actually paid by the state.

Thinking about it she realized she’d suspected there was something wrong all along. In his furtive manner. All the half-answered questions. Now he was out of the security service for good they’d have to make ends meet. And without any prospect of support from his father too. Lucas didn’t like the idea his son might quit the service. He’d already made that clear in a brief and chilly phone call.

‘What are we going to do?’ she asked.

‘Go to bed,’ he said, raising the glass again with a hopeful wink.

‘And after that?’

He turned serious again.

‘Me? Try to be a husband again. A better dad.’

‘Saskia thinks you’re the best already.’

‘Only because I cut you out. Divide and rule. It’s what we do. And the Kuypers have always . . .’

His eyes strayed towards the grand building opposite and the statue of the stern, old aristocrat in the courtyard. The man who lost New Amsterdam and now lay buried in a crumbling stone tomb not far from Wall Street, in the city that followed, New York.

‘Henk,’ she said and took his hand, squeezed the fingers.

He couldn’t stop staring out of the window. The West-Indisch Huis. The little park. The trees. The kids’ playground. This was home and he’d forgotten about it, completely.

There was a shape across the way, just visible in the weak street lights. A man resting against the metal playground fence, something in his hand.

The lights played on the glass. Red, blue and green, a pretty pattern against the window.

‘Henk!’

Her voice was harder, full of angry trepidation. The way it used to be.

Kuyper stared at himself . . . at them . . . reflected in the panes.

Red, green and blue.

One of the red lights was bigger than the others. It was dodging around rapidly, which seemed curious.

Moving on him. Up towards his temple.

Hanna walked straight into the room. A figure on the leather sofa turned to look.

Cem Yilmaz, naked from the waist up. A glass of something in his hand. No one else there. No smell of sweat. Just something like a fragrant tea.

The old green holdall she’d bought in the Noordermarkt an age before was beside him on the floor. Top open. Money ruffled around inside as if he was counting every note.

The big Turk got up, furious as hell, big fist waving, yelling some kind of abuse.

He stopped in front of her, face twisted with rage.

‘Who asked you here?’

She retreated a step, out of his reach.

‘You promised me my daughter back,’ she told him. ‘Instead you took her.’

The anger abated for a moment. Amusement there instead.

‘And?’

‘Why?’

He laughed.

‘Why not?’

So much determination before she came in here. Now, faced with the decision, the will began to desert her.

She couldn’t find the words.

‘You make a poor whore. Maybe you think it’s beneath you.’

Hand in coat, shaking, struggling to keep hold of the gun.

He leaned forward.

‘Trust me. It’s not. But . . .’ He shrugged. ‘I got sixty thousand profit. Dmitri won’t dare say a word. Nor you either.’

Another step closer.

‘No recriminations. Nothing owed on either side.’ He held out his hand, fat fingers stretched wide. ‘Deal?’

Hanna said nothing.

The big hand turned into a fist. The smile vanished from his face.

One more step and his forearm was out, trying to trap her neck. Moving with a speed that seemed unreal.

Gun slipping in her grip as she retreated to the lift.

She tore off the glove. Got her sweaty fingers round the butt, the trigger.

Tried to lift it, to aim.

One shot.

It rang out over the Herenmarkt, echoed round the courtyard of the old mansion where the burghers of Amsterdam once gathered to carve the new world into convenient and profitable pieces.

Renata Kuyper watched unable to comprehend what she saw.

Like a dream. A nightmare contained in seconds.

There was a crack at the window. The sound of breaking glass.

He flew back from his chair with a single, offended sigh.

Fell on the plush dining-room carpet. Head a mess, blood everywhere, much else besides.

No sound from him. No time for her to scream, to think.

She stood up, hand to mouth. Went towards him.

Whispered, ‘Henk . . . ?’

One shot.

Missed.

Cem Yilmaz roared. Kept staggering towards her. Arm up. Furious. Beast not man.

A single thought.

This was Natalya’s monster. He came for me not her.

The elbow took her in the throat. Fingers round her neck. The grip of a fighter, a wrestler, looking to snap the life from her while his foul breath pumped with anxious pleasure.

The gun faltered in Hanna’s grip again, pushed to one side by his force.

She gasped for air. Saw the darkness start to close in from the edges of the too-bright room.

‘You fuck up everything, woman,’ he spat. ‘Everything . . .’

Renata Kuyper stood at the head of the table, looking at her husband’s broken bloody frame on the floor.

No movement. No breath. Whatever had entered the room at that moment took him completely.

The night breeze gusted through the shattered window. Christmas lights tinkling against the broken pane.

Wondering what to do. What to touch. Who to call.

Outside, across the street, by a grubby playground sandpit, a figure held a long and complex rifle against the metal fence.

His scrubbed cheeks hurt. A red fire burned in his head.

Soon to be extinguished. Dampened by the needs of flight and the catharsis of a sudden vengeance.

The man once called Khaled peered through the sights of the Remington MSR.

Saw someone there, stiff and shocked in the room across the street. Thought for a moment about justice and decency. Those who deserved to die. Those who didn’t.

Didn’t think long.

Second shot.

A woman in an expensive dress jerked like a marionette tugged by invisible strings.

He pulled the sight from his face. Threw the weapon into the sandpit.

Set off for Haarlemmerstraat on the long straight walk to Centraal. And a deliverance from this place.

Second shot.

The gun went off as her shaking index finger struggled with the trigger. Could have gone anywhere.

But Yilmaz was staggering back holding his gut. Mouth open. Eyes in shock.

No one hurt the king. He lived forever.

Not any more.

Third shot.

It went into his big broad chest and blood came back, spitting out of a fresh livid wound that opened like a blinded eye.

Cem Yilmaz fell to his knees, mouth flapping, no words, just a grunt of shock and anger. And pain.

Fourth shot.

The chest again. That wall of muscle bounced but still he knelt, swaying back, gazing at her in disbelief.

Monsters do not die easily.

She lifted the gun, watched his bloody lips try to form a word, a plea.

Hanna stood over him, jerked on the trigger until nothing happened any more.

Van der Berg was with Natalya and Sam now. Throwing the rope bone between them in a game the little dog loved.

He scampered through the rickety chairs and tables. Yapping. Squealing. Not minding what he hit, how many things he knocked over.

Back and forth the rope bone went. Vos and Laura Bakker watched from the bar.

Finally, as Sam lost his footing, fell sideways scuttling across the polished timber before retrieving the toy just as it was about to reach her hands, Natalya Bublik laughed.

‘Thank God for that,’ Bakker said. ‘I can’t believe they didn’t keep her in hospital.’

‘Her mother insisted.’

She looked at him.

‘And no one dare say no to her.’

He raised his glass and said all the things he’d planned. Thanks. And praise. And an apology.

‘Will you ever trust me?’ she asked.

‘I do already.’

‘So why wasn’t I in on the secret? Why did you let me think Frank had really kicked you out?’

It was a question he’d expected. She knew the good ones to ask now.

‘Because if it had gone wrong the consequences—’

‘To hell with consequences, Pieter! Do you think they bother me?’

‘No. Which is one more reason to do what we did.’

Her red hair was tied neatly back. She still kept knocking things over all the time, but that was a trait that would stay with her. Mostly Laura Bakker had mellowed and matured these last few months.

Her long index finger jabbed his shoulder.

‘Don’t protect me. I can look after myself, thank you.’

‘So I gather,’ Vos added and chinked her glass.

One last breath. It sounded like an angry beast giving up on itself. Then the Turk’s sweaty, bloody chest was still and he tumbled sideways onto the bloodied carpet.