Death By Water (10 page)

She had bitten straight through the filter. Wim was standing over her, talking. Something about time passing, something about a meter; he wasn’t cheap, and here she sat helping herself to his time as though he was a nigger eunuch. She got dressed and muttered something about an accident. Obviously he believed her, because suddenly he stopped talking and contented himself with a shake of the head.

– Tomorrow you be here clean and focused, he called after her as she disappeared out the door.

The December day was filled to the brim with a cold damp that gusted along Lijnbaansgracht and froze around her, layer upon layer of floating ice. The roads were slippery, but she cycled alongside the canal as fast as she could. A woman wearing a coat and a broad-brimmed hat who stood smoking by the railing of one of the houseboats turned and waved as she rode by. She pedalled harder. Two old men were fishing from a canal bridge. One was wearing a flat hat; he spat in the water. Suddenly she stopped. Leaned the cycle up against the railings and pulled out her phone.

– It’s me. Liss.

A sound at the other end. At first she didn’t understand what it was.

Her mother was crying. Liss had never heard her crying before. She could disconnect now. Knew all she needed to know. That something had happened to Mailin. That something had changed, that things would never be the same again. And deep down, inside all the haziness she didn’t dare to touch, something like relief.

– How long has she been missing? she heard herself ask.

From the disjointed answer she gathered that it was almost twenty-four hours. That fitted with what Mailin’s partner had said.

– What are we going to do, Liss?

Her mother never asked questions like that. At least she never asked her. She was the one who answered them. Told people what was to be done. Always clear headed. Always a step ahead, prepared down to the last detail. Now here she was not even able to speak properly, just repeating the same words over and over again,
what are we going to do? what are we going to do?

– I’ll call you later, Liss said, and ended the conversation. It hadn’t been a conversation, but a hole opening up in broad daylight.

She came back to her senses at the sound of a car horn tooting. She cycled along Marnixstraat, the traffic denser now. It was colder; her breath billowed out in a frosty cloud in front of her. She dived into it, out again.

Passing a Jamin shop, she stopped and went in. Avoid speaking to anyone, just get what she needed. No thoughts, following a pattern she had worked out but not used for a while. Bought ice cream. A litre and a half. Pure vanilla. No bits of nut or chocolate. Grabbed a Pepsi Max and a plastic spoon. It was getting dark. She’d been riding round. Been to Vondelpark. Didn’t know what had become of the day. Knew only that it was the end of something. And the start of something else. She bowled along Marnixkade with the Pepsi and the ice cream in a bag. Suddenly she found herself by the flat she had shared with Rikke. An obscure notion to go up and see her, get her to find Zako and trick him into saying what had happened. Find out if he knew anything about Mailin going missing. But Rikke wouldn’t be able to manage a job like that.

She passed the asphalt playground where some boys were playing basketball in the dark. They shouted out to her. How about a ride, then? She carried on out to the point, to the little park with the bench, sank down beneath the pale light of the lamp. She’d sat there many times before. The bench was coated with a layer of ice. The cold seeped up from the ground and into her back. It helped, to be freezing. The frost slowed down her thoughts. She could focus on the metallic jangling that reached her ears every time a car rattled across the joint on the bridge on the far side of the canal. She could let her gaze follow the distant trains that passed on their way to and from Centraal Station.

The picture came again. Mailin in the pale blue pyjamas. She turns and locks the door. Creeping into bed, putting her arms around her. There’s a sound too, it’s part of the picture. Footsteps stopping outside. The latch on the door moving. Knocking that gets louder and louder, becomes beating, and Mailin holding her close and tight.
Nothing bad will ever, ever happen to you, Liss.

Abruptly she pulled the box out of the bag, broke open the lid. The ice cream was so hard the spoon snapped. She hacked away at it with the handle, gobbled down the pieces that she worked loose. The cold spread to her stomach too. She got out her lighter and moved it back and forth under the base. Soon she was able to dig out larger chunks of the vanilla-sweet mass. Hungry even as she was eating. It only took a few minutes to get the whole lot down. She squeezed the sides of the empty carton and squashed it into a rubbish bin on the other side of the gravel path. Ducked into the bushes and emptied herself. The taste of vanilla as it ran out of her was still just as strong. She couldn’t vacate herself completely; the remains of something were still down in her stomach somewhere, something she was unable to get up. She rested a while with her forehead against a tree. Maybe it was an oak; the bark was full of sharp ridges she could press herself against.

Her thoughts no longer whirled around in disarray. They began to gather. Separable, one from the next. Mailin gone. Find Mailin, before it’s too late. Zako got someone to take that photo of her … Liss stood up again. Knew what she had to do. She was still freezing. The cold streaming from her stomach kept her thinking calm. She cycled back along Lijnbaansgracht. It had to be past midnight. Houseboat windows all in darkness. A few swans drifting on the black canal.

Dark in his kitchen window too, the one facing Bloemstraat. She could ring him, or send a text message. Decided to wait. Positioned herself in a doorway on the other side. Even colder now. She needed this cold. The thought of Mailin being missing kept slipping away from her. Only the imprint of it remained. Her mother’s voice breaking up. She, Liss, was the one who should have gone missing. Anything could happen to her. The ground beneath her feet was always on the point of giving way. She lived in places where people disappeared. They ran off, or they gave up. If someone had called Mother and told her that her daughter Liss had disappeared it would have grieved her, but the grief would not have been unexpected. She was already half mourned. If something happened to Mailin, it would tear her apart.

An hour, perhaps more, had passed when she heard a motorcycle turn up from the bridge at Prinsengracht. A few seconds later he pulled up outside the entrance. He was alone. She resisted the impulse to race across the street and grab hold of his jacket. Waited till he’d gone in. Waited till the kitchen light went on. Waited a while longer, and then called him.

– What do you want? he asked, not even offering a greeting.

– Was just in the neighbourhood. On my way home. Thought I’d call in.

Zako grunted and ended the call. Two and a half minutes later, she rang the bell. He let her in. The fourth-floor door was ajar. The hallway smelt as though it had been freshly washed. He always got girls to come and clean up for him and never paid them a cent.

She stopped in the middle of the room. He was sitting on the sofa with a can of Amstel in his hand, looked up from the screen where a bunch of footballers were running round yelling at each other. Without waiting to be asked, she sat down. He didn’t bother asking what she was doing in his place. Had obviously taken it for granted that she would show up again.

– I’ve come here because there’s something I need you to tell me. Two weeks ago you showed me that picture, at the Café Alto. Of my sister.

He leaned back in the sofa, put his feet on the table. Finally he turned his gaze to her. The small lips twitched, as though suppressing a smile.

– Your sister, he repeated up into the air.

She might have run out to the kitchen, grabbed a breadknife, held it to his throat, threatened it out of him. She forced herself back to her calmness, the calmness that came from the cold still occupying her empty stomach. Don’t let him get the upper hand now. If Zako gets the upper hand, he’ll never let you go again.

– Have you … any more pictures of her?

– Sure have, he grinned.

– Who took them?

He whistled between his teeth.

– You don’t want to know that, Liss. You want to know as little as possible.

– You’re bluffing me, Zako. You’ve always been like that. Want people to believe you know everything.

He jerked slightly. – I can hear you haven’t had it for a while. Is that why you’re here?

– Could be. She acted as though she was thinking it over. – But first you’ve got to tell me about those pictures.

He sat up and dug a packet out of his jacket pocket. – A line each. And we’ll make things good again.

She forced a smile. A line and a fuck. How simple the world could be. She took off her jacket and pullover. Let the skirt drop, stood there in black tights and a thin blouse, knew he liked to see her like that.

– You’re as stubborn as a goat, he growled.

– Didn’t know you had anything against goats.

Now he laughed.

– Who took that picture? she tried again.

– Someone I know. He sprinkled the white power on to the glass table. – Someone who owed me a favour.

– Does he live in Oslo?

He made three lines with a Visa card. – Nope.

A word he usually used when he was lying.

– Why do you send people to Oslo to take pictures of my sister?

He glanced up at her. – Is this an interrogation?

– I don’t believe you, Mr Bluff.

He took a note from his cardholder, rolled it into a cylinder. – It’s up to you what you believe.

– Give me some proof that you got someone to take those pictures and I’ll never doubt you again.

He looked at her for a long time. She could have screamed it out now, that Mailin had gone missing, that he had to tell her what he knew, otherwise she’d report him. Instead she closed her eyes, shook her head, acting exasperated.

– You always have these big plans, Zako. Why should I believe you’ll ever amount to anything?

He stood up suddenly, took out his phone. Punched a key and held it up for her.

– The pictures were sent to me from Oslo. Understand? I mean what I say.

Liss turned towards the window, bit her lip. I know him well, she told herself again. He could go to great lengths to make her feel insecure. But abduct Mailin? … What did she actually know about him? Did she in fact understand anything of what went on around her? Had she ever understood anything of this world she was living in? This picture: go out into the forest, it’s night, lie down in the snow, look up at the sky between the tops of the fir trees, glide into the grey-black, give up and sleep for ever.

– Why did you do it? she asked without turning round.

She heard Zako put his beer bottle down on the glass table. – You need me, Liss, he said, almost friendly. – Fuck, think what we could do together, the two of us.

He snorted. Twice.

– The third one is yours.

She sat down beside him. Picked up the note and breathed in, saw how the last grains got sucked in, felt the burning high up in her nostrils. Clear your thoughts, she told herself. Stay calm a little longer.

Zako took hold of her hand and pushed it down towards his flies. She could feel the movement beneath the smooth material of the trousers. Like pastry swelling, she thought.

– I need to go to the toilet.

– Be quick, he growled. – And bring me an Amstel from the fridge.

She dried herself and flushed, let the cold tap run, put both hands there and held them under. – Liss, she murmured to herself. It sounded sad. Same sound as in
missing
. Occasionally the kids at school would call after her:
Liss, Liss, piss, piss
.

She opened the cupboard above the basin. In an envelope she found dozens of small light blue pills. She tore off a sheet of toilet paper, wrapped six of them inside, picked up the tumbler with the toothbrush and toothpaste in and pressed the base of it against the pills, ground them into a fine powder against the basin, packed it inside the paper. In the kitchen she took a beer and opened it. Emptied the powder into it, cleaned off the grains that clung to the neck of the bottle. Shook it carefully.

– What’s keeping you?

She slipped back into the living room, put the bottle down on the table in front of him.

– This game is shit. He scowled at the screen.

– Feel like one too, she said and fetched another Amstel from the kitchen, sat down close to him. He opened his flies and showed her what he had to offer.

– Cheers, she said, and pressed the ice-cold bottle against the strutting penis.

– Think doing that’ll make it collapse, he grinned as he picked up his own bottle and half emptied it in one swig. Within a few minutes his head began to droop. He pulled at the top of her tights, tried to get them down past her thighs.

– Let me help you, she said and slowly peeled them off. Then she unbuttoned her blouse. Stood in front of him wearing nothing but her G-string. He lifted his arm to take it off.

– What’s going on? he mumbled, and had to give up, sank back down into the sofa, eyes closed.

She picked up his phone, unlocked it, navigated to the photos of Mailin. In the first one she was on her way out of a gate. There was someone with her, a guy she presumed was Viljam. He was tall and well built, fair haired and with slightly slanted eyes. Then a series of eleven other pictures, including the one Zako had shown her at the Café Alto. The same fair-haired guy was in a couple of these two. The photos had been sent from a number that began with 0047. Funny that Zako didn’t delete the message, she thought. If he really had put someone on Mailin’s trail, he probably wouldn’t leave their number on his phone. Zako was a shit, but he wasn’t an idiot. She noted the number down on a newspaper lying on the table, ripped off the strip, put it in her jacket pocket, pulled it out again, wrote down the date the message was sent. Quickly searched the drawers in his desk. In the bottom one she found what she was looking for: the photo of Mailin. She stuffed this into her jacket pocket too, didn’t find any more that had been printed out.