After the Silence: Inspector Rykel Book 1 (Amsterdam Quartet) (33 page)

Friday, 6 January
17.23

‘… Hansen. H-A-N-S-E-N.’

The woman at the front desk was unmoved by Jaap’s urgency. She looked up the name with what seemed to Jaap maddening slowness, eventually finding a ward number on the fifth floor.

He ran over to the lift and hit the button repeatedly, the numbers indicating that it currently resided on the ninth floor. Eventually it started to move down, stopping at number six, and then it was on the move again, only the next number to appear was seven. Jaap cursed and hit the button repeatedly, then gave up and tried to find the stairs.

By the time he reached the fifth floor his lungs felt as if he had been breathing in mustard gas. He ran down the corridor, checking off the numbers in his head, and he could hear someone, a woman, screaming.

Was that Saskia? He couldn’t tell, the human voice seemed to lose its personal characteristics when pushed to the extreme. Maybe, and he was surprised with the clarity of the thought which popped into his head, it was nature’s way of making sure that a cry for help was always answered, not on personal grounds, but as a matter of duty for the survival of the species.

As he neared the number he was looking for the screaming got louder, and when he burst through the door, it increased in volume twofold.

The doctor, clad in green, jumped as the door flew open, but he didn’t say anything, he could tell from the wild look on Jaap’s face why he was here, and he turned back to the bed.

Friday, 6 January
20.41

Tanya lay her head back on the pillow.

The material was starched so hard it only gave in patches, the smell of fabric conditioner surrounding her. It was quiet, an occasional call for a doctor mixed with the soft snoring from the old woman who was the only other occupant of the room. Nurses periodically opened the door, spilling light in from the corridor, and left again, letting the door swing shut.

They’d stitched her up – her leg now looked like a horror version of snakes and ladders – and told her she was lucky, that there was nothing to worry about.

But that wasn’t true. She’d already had a visit from an officer telling her she was going to be booked for assaulting Bloem; they hadn’t decided on exact charges, but he’d made it plain that they were going to do everything they could to make sure she was punished severely.

And then there was Adrijana. People had been congratulating her for saving her, but as she’d lain in the ambulance having her leg cleaned, the local anaesthetic just dulling the pain, not eradicating it, she realized she’d only managed to put her in just as much danger again.

She would now get swallowed up in the same system which had placed her with her own foster parents.

Taken into care, so the phrase went.

Of course she knew that not every foster parent was a child abuser, they couldn’t be, but all she could think about was her own experience. She wrestled back and forth, slipping from end to end on a see-saw.

She had done the right thing.

If it wasn’t for her who knew what would have happened, but the pictures in her mind, images from her past, kept getting mixed up with images of Adrijana.

The door opened and Jaap walked in, coming over to her bedside.

They looked at each other.

‘Jaap, can I ask you something?’

‘Sure.’

‘When we were out there, and De Waart was about to shoot us, you were smiling.’ Jaap nodded. ‘What were you smiling about?’

‘I thought you’d passed out?’ he said, looking away from her.

‘I had, but I must have come round for a second. And I’m sure you were smiling.’

Friday, 6 January
21.05

‘So then what happened, you came in to save the day?’

Kees sat back on Carice’s sofa, his hand accepting the cold beer she held out before flopping down beside him. Candles dotted the room, soft music crept from hidden speakers.

‘Yeah, I did actually.’ He took a swig, focusing back on Carice.

‘And you shot an Inspector?’

He shrugged like it was no big deal, like he regularly shot people. He hoped Carice couldn’t see the bottle shaking in his fingers. He tightened his grip.

‘He was about to shoot Jaap.’

‘Did you kill him?’

He relived the moment he’d pulled the trigger and watched De Waart’s head explode.

He’d always wondered what it would be like.

Now he knew.

‘Yeah,’ he said before downing the last of the beer. ‘You might even get the autopsy.’

‘Great, piling up the work for me.’ She shifted, stretched her leg out, her foot landing slowly in his lap, toes burrowing. ‘It could be like some TV series, a partnership between
us. Each week you kill someone off and I fake the autopsy, keep the suspicion away from you.’

He thought back to the conversation he’d had with Jaap in the station car park. Jaap had told him he needed to get help and he was probably right. There were places you could go for that, people who’d been through it and could relate, could help you get off the stuff.

He saw De Waart’s head bursting like a ripe watermelon, played in slo-mo in his mind again.

He felt like he needed a line right now.

‘So is there anything I should look out for on this one?’ She tipped her head back and took a sip of her own beer. He watched her long pale neck flickering in the candle light.

He really needed a line. Hell, he needed a whole motorway of the stuff.

‘Not really, just that he doesn’t have much of a head left.’

A sliver of dawn started to ease on to the horizon, pushing up the night’s hem.

Jaap was awake, staring out of the hospital window, Saskia asleep in the bed next to him, exhausted, emotionally drained, drugged to the eyeballs. The snow had stopped at about three in the morning; he’d been watching the flakes for hours, like white petals, or feathers floating down from a ripped pillow.

He’d only slept in episodes, partly as the chair wasn’t really designed to be sat in, let alone for sleeping, but partly because he was wired, too much having happened in such a short space of time, and he needed to digest it all. Needed to let his mind run though it, neutralize it.

He’d found Andreas’ and Karin’s killer, but there was no real satisfaction in that.

Andreas was still dead.

Karin was still dead.

And on top of that the discovery of the photo of Andreas had opened up a whole other avenue of sorrow. He didn’t want to think about how Andreas had lived, carrying that secret around with him for years, eating away at him.

But maybe it hadn’t, maybe he’d got over it, somehow managed to move on.

They were dead and that was it, more victims in a long
line of victims, and for the first time he had a feeling for the futility of what he did.

He heard footsteps approaching outside and looked up to see the door open slowly, Smit’s face appearing as the gap widened. He jerked his head towards the corridor before disappearing. Jaap joined him, closing the door quietly as he left.

‘All okay?’ Smit motioned to the door.

Jaap nodded, feeling a distinct lack of interest in Smit’s question.

‘Good.’ Smit coughed, looked down the corridor to where a nurse was fiddling with a saline drip on wheels. ‘I’ve talked to Kees so I know what happened. I’ll be giving a press conference later on this morning.’

Jaap could picture it already, Smit talking about the exoneration of Andreas from the child pornography claims, the swift result in Friedman’s, Zwartberg’s and Haak’s deaths and the busting of a child porn ring at the same time. Add to that the saving of a kidnapped child and Smit had just the kind of results he needed to secure his next career move.

But with De Waart, an Inspector working under him, to have been so heavily implicated with a criminal gang, and then guilty of murdering a fellow officer, that career move wasn’t going to happen.

‘We are going to need further investigation into De Waart’s death though,’ continued Smit. ‘I’m not sure anyone can be sure that he was really involved.’

‘He admitted to me that he was, he told me he was going to kill me like he’d killed Andreas and Karin.’ Jaap was trying to keep his voice down, but the nurse had looked up at them.

Smit took a step closer.

‘Keep your voice down.’ He looked around him before continuing. ‘The thing is, we –’

‘The thing is, you’re trying to cover it up because you don’t want it known that De Waart was bent, on your watch.’

‘Inspector Rykel, I have a duty to the department here. A story like that is not going to help anyone, you know that. We’ll have the press all over us, and I’m not going to allow that to happen. I’ve dropped the charges against you –’

‘Those charges were never going to stick, you know that.’

‘– and I’ve taken off all mention of them from your record. But …’ He leant closer; Jaap could see something white crusted at the side of his mouth. ‘… if this story comes out then I’ll know where it came from. Charges can be reinstated. So think hard before you do anything.’

Smit turned and walked down the corridor.

‘You’re going to say he was killed in the line of duty, aren’t you?’ Jaap called out after him. ‘Make him a hero.’

Smit didn’t stop walking.

‘And what about my sister? And Andreas? You’re happy to leave that listed as unsolved?’

Smit turned back.

‘There’s more than enough evidence that it was Grimberg –’

‘That was De Waart covering his back!’

‘So where’s your proof?’

‘He confessed. To me.’

‘Witnesses?’

Jaap felt like he was burning.

Smit turned the corner, and was gone from sight.

Jaap stood for a moment, before pulling out the photo he had of Andreas as a teenager.

He studied it for a moment, then ripped it into tiny pieces, his hands shaking as he did so, and dropped it into a bin marked ‘Sharps’.

He made his way to Saskia’s room and sat back in the chair.

Maybe Smit was right, exposing De Waart would only make all their jobs harder.

And it would end his own career in the police, but he wasn’t sure he cared.

He could call Niels. He pulled out his phone.

But it wasn’t just him any more.

Saskia had told him just after the birth. That time last spring. She’d lied to him about the timing. The birth wasn’t premature.

Glancing out the window he could see the light revealing a soft world, corners rounded off, the lone tracks of a dog or fox in the park just across the street. Everything looked clean, pristine, a beautiful world for a newborn to enter, and suddenly he wished that he could keep it just as it was, its stillness, its clarity, its sheer peacefulness for ever.

Keep it for his daughter, who’d just mewed softly like a kitten, cocooned in Saskia’s arms.

He rummaged in his pocket, looking for change. Then he pulled out his I Ching, took a deep breath, and started flipping coins.

My thanks to Simon Trewin at WME for guiding me with both skill and humour, and to Rowland White at Penguin for the kind of enthusiasm which I’m sure all writers crave – to both of you I am truly grateful. I’d also like to thank Nick Lowndes for his killer eye for detail and calm demean-our in the face of a writer who likes to tinker right up until the last moment.

I was lucky enough to have three people read early drafts of the book, and I received from Benjamin Evans, Gordon Weetman and Kylie Fitzpatrick encouragement and excellent advice. In Amsterdam Feico Deutekom and Marjolein van Doorn offered a warm welcome back to the city I’d spent several years in during the early 2000s, and even if we disagreed on seagulls, their help was invaluable. I still made some stuff up though where it suited the story, and for that I’m entirely responsible.

Thanks also go to both my parents who have always been behind me, giving support regardless of the recklessness of some of my ventures, and my wife Zara who is my first reader, and so much more.

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First published 2014

Copyright © Dark Sky Productions, 2014
All rights reserved

The moral right of Jake Woodhouse as the original author has been asserted

Issa haiku [‘A world of dew’] from
The Sound of Water: Haiku by Basho, Buson, Issa and Other Poets
, translated by Sam Hamill, © 1995 by Sam Hamill. Reprinted by arrangement with The Permissions Company, Inc., on behalf of Shambhala Publications Inc., Boston, MA.
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ISBN: 978-1-405-91430-7