The Devil's Playground (10 page)

it was still only a string of numbers. He placed the bookmark

among the rubble of his table, slipping it between a case file

and an Eiffel Tower paperweight, making sure that it would

not be obscured from Jon’s view. He checked the clock

above him and waited. He knew that he would have to watch

the Englishman carefully, that he was his only lead. It had

been a long case and so far there had been nothing. Almost

as if the killer was a ghost.

He moved the bookmark an inch to the left, exposing it

further, just to make sure.

There was a knock at the door. Van Hijn shouted ‘Enter’

and watched the small, unassuming figure of Jon Reed shuffle

in. He noted the man’s limp and the way he tried to hide it,

the look of unravelling. He stood up and motioned his guest

to take a seat. ‘Glad you could come, sir.’

Jon shook his hand. The detective had a firm but gentle

grip, not trying to assert its power in the initial squeeze.

‘Please call me Jon,’ he said.

‘Okay Jon, I’m Ronald. I was the one who spoke to you

on the phone.’

He called one of the officers in and ordered some coffee.

The man scowled and turned away. ‘Cigarette?’ He held out

a pack of Luckies towards Jon.

‘Thanks.’ Jon took one.

‘I hope the hotel is to your liking.’

‘It’s fine, thank you.’ He couldn’t help being polite, cowed

by authority, by being abroad. ‘Stairs are a bit steep though.

I sprained my ankle the other day.’

The detective laughed. ‘Yes, I see. Still, they say that’s the

best way to make it better, keep walking on it.’

Jon wasn’t sure whether the detective was having a joke

at his expense or trying to be sympathetic. He silently

_ begrudged the fact that he wasn’t better at reading people.

If he had been, would Jake still be alive?

The coffee arrived, fresh and steaming, and they both took

cautious sips before continuing. Van Hijn briefed Jon on the

basics of the case. His voice was steady and calm and his

accent almost undetectable. His eyes, grey-blue and bloodshot,

seemed to scan Jon as he spoke. We found no wallet

on him. We assume it was stolen either by the assailant or

someone who came upon the body later. As you know, we

also found a small book of poems in his pocket. An old

edition of Pound. Unusual in itself. Your phone number

and name were written on the first page. It certainly made

us wonder.’

Jon remembered the book, remembered giving it to the

old man a couple of days before his disappearance. ‘Yes, I

lent him the book.’

The detective seemed to be turning this simple notion

over in his mind as if it was a wooden box, exquisitely carved

and dovetailed, and he was trying to find the small, almost

invisible crack that would betray the secret compartment.

‘But why do you think he was carrying it on the day he

was killed?’

Jon stared at the detective, unsure what to say. There was

something fuzzy about the policeman, as if all his edges had

been softened by some terrible incident.

‘Coincidence?’ Jon offered.

Van Hijn smiled and there was a certain quickness in his

eyes which made Jon decide to be a bit more careful with

what he said from then on.

‘Yes, perhaps. There is always that. But why this book? I

ask myself this. A book with another man’s phone number

on it.’

The detective let the words hang in the smoky room.

There was nothing Jon could say to this and, as he watched

the detective watching him, he wondered whether he was a

suspect. Feeling the slight tremble of anger humming

through his arms. He’d come all the way here for this?

He stared at the table. The utter mess and chaos of

yellowed pages, stained and crumpled, stacked atop each

other, lidless pens sandwiched between newspaper cut-outs

and the stark edges of photos.

He looked up at the detective. There was a smile on the

Dutchman’s face.

‘How was he killed?’ Jon asked, determined not to let the

situation put him on the defensive.

‘You’ll see for yourself soon enough,’ the detective replied.

He looked down at his hands and Jon sensed a deep sadness

huddled around the man like an extra layer of clothing. The

same vibrating funk that had held Jake in its grasp.

We believe your friend was the latest victim in a string of

similar murders perpetrated over the last nine months,’ Van

Hijn finally said.

‘A serial killer?‘Jon asked, thinking back to the man at the

hotel.

‘Maybe, maybe not. That is the common consensus.’ He

took a deep drag of his cigarette. ‘I do not think so however,

not in the way you might think anyway.’

Jon felt himself edging forward. ‘What, then?’

Well, in none of the cases was there any sign of sexual

assault.’

Were they all men, like Jake?’

‘On the contrary, he was the first. The eight other victims

were all female, between the ages of twelve and thirty-five.

Despite this, there were similarities. The girls had been

tortured over a period of several days before their eventual

deaths. Your friend showed evidence to suggest the same.’

It was the gentlest way he could put it. He paused as he

waited for the words to sink in.

‘Yes. You see, we found certain dog hairs on Jake’s clothes.

Those same dog hairs were also present in most of the other

victims. The body was found in a similar place. Number

nine.’

‘Nine?’

Van Hijn smiled, cryptically, Jon thought, as if hiding

something behind that pleasantry. Well, either he’s the ninth

victim or he’s the perpetrator.’

Jon stared at the detective, unsure what he was supposed

to say.

Van Hijn laughed. ‘Sorry, that’s what we always say. At

least, until we find out different.’

‘How long has this been going on?’

‘Since January.’ There was no need to mention the incident.

No need at all.

‘And you think it’s the work of the same person?’

‘Not that sure we’re talking about a single person here,

could be a group of them.’

‘A group?’

‘The last victim before your friend.’ Van Hijn stopped,

looked into his coffee and lit another cigarette. ‘Have you

ever heard of a Judas Cradle?’

‘No,’ Jon replied.

The detective shrugged. ‘An old medieval torture instrument,

used frequently during the Inquisition. It’s basically a

metal pyramid on legs. The victim is hoisted to the top by a

set of pulleys and left to sink on the point of the pyramid.

Weights are attached to the feet. Death can take up to four

or five days.’

‘A bit elaborate, isn’t it?’

Van Hijn smiled. Well, exactly. Not the kind of thing your

ordinary killer can be bothered with.’

Jon took a deep breath. ‘What about Jake?’

‘No, with Jake we are not sure yet but the method of death

was certainly not this.’

Jon felt stunned, as if hit by a baseball bat to the back of

the head. ‘How … how can you be so sure that Jake’s part

of this? He was sleeping on the streets, he could have died a

hundred different ways.’

The detective seemed to take this information in. He

nodded, thoughtfully. ‘Yes, that is possible. However, I don’t

think so. There’s just too much that links up.’ He didn’t want

to admit that the theory he was working on depended on it.

‘Tell me about the others.’

‘Are you sure you want to know?’

‘Yes,’ Jon said.

Van Hijn sipped at his coffee, thought about it, how maybe

more could be gained by telling him. ‘The first victim came

to us via the screams of an elderly Japanese lady who was

out walking one early morning in the Plantage Parklaan when

her dog started getting too interested in what was hiding in

the bushes. She was seventeen and we found her in two

sections. The dog had discovered her legs. A few hours later

we found the rest. But, you see, the body wasn’t cut in two,

or sawed, it seemed as if it had been ripped apart by bare

hands in some unimaginable blood frenzy.’

Jon spat his coffee back into the cup, the taste suddenly

sweet and sickly.

‘But of course it was a machine that had done it. They

found splinters of wood and flakes of leather and hair all

over her hands and feet. Then the second turned up. She

had been missing for a year. She had been five foot eight

when she disappeared. The body we found measured four

foot ten. It had been warped and twisted into a horrible

convoluted dwarf. Yet her teeth told us we had the right girl.

I don’t know who first came up with the idea. These things

float the halls of police stations, they seem to have no origin

in any one person, somehow a conflation of half-thought

opinions and late-night lunacy. Someone said that the victims

had been tortured to death. That since every other theory

had been disproved, let them try Rack and Scavenger’s

Daughter, let them try to disprove that, and of course, no

one could. And by the time the next body was found, a

twelve-year-old Surinamese girl… Well, there wasn’t a

doubt. She’d been a victim of the Maiden of Nuremberg,

one of those sarcophagi with spikes inside, carefully constructed

so that they don’t pierce any vital organs thus

assuring a slow and painful death. We cross-checked all our

records, we found certain consistencies. The marks and

mutilations made by an Inquisition Chair, a Heretic’s Fork,

a Garrotte. Once we knew where to look, it was easy. All the

victims had been drugged. Rather crudely. Same as your

friend. They were all dumped in prominent public places.

There was no sexual intercourse. There was a certain stylization

in their deaths, a ritualistic element. These were very visual deaths. I’ve seen this kind of thing before. The dog hairs, all of the same type, well, they’re what you call the ribbon.’

Jon didn’t say anything at first. He stared at the spider

webbed cracks in the ceiling of the interview room. If Van

Hijn’s phone call had been steeped in a certain unreality then

sitting in this dingy room, on a chair that was chained to the

floor, made it all very precise and clear. Jake was gone and,

down here, he realized it for the first time, not in an abstract

way but as something physical, a dead weight of memory.

What the fuck is this all about?’ he asked the detective. All

those images spinning up in his brain. Blood and geometry.

O-level history, textbooks full of wooden devices with metal and winking eyes, imagining the blood and hair …

‘You know what snuff movies are?’ The detective lit

another cigarette, passed one to Jon.

‘Of course,’ Jon replied. Well, I know what people mean

by it, I don’t know how much of it actually exists and how much is the stuff of urban legend.’

‘It exists. Anything that people are willing to pay for, exists. Especially in this town, and snuff of one kind or another seems to be something a lot of people will pay for. Big money, big people. I think these bodies are a form of snuff disposal, if you’ll excuse the expression. They need to get rid of the bodies, so they just leave them around the city, knowing obviously what everyone will think initially — it’s a serial killer. And it’s perfect because they can keep doing

this, if there’s no actual serial killer then he can’t be caught,

the bodies pile up, the pressure is put on us but we’re

following totally the wrong leads.’

‘You think they were killed for the sake of filming it.’ Jon

thought it over in his mind. More blackness swirling. ‘Jake

doesn’t seem prime snuff fodder to me.’

Van Hijn smiled. ‘No theory is perfect. But these things

happen. I worked seven years in vice, here. Two years undercover

chasing just this kind of thing. Don’t let anyone tell

you it doesn’t exist. Ridiculous. Even if it didn’t originally,

then just the myths would be enough to make people try it

out. What starts as metaphor has a habit of becoming reality.

But some of these films, they use extras, the old man perhaps

who forces the knife, who knows? A lot of these things are

tailor-made. A private exposition of your psyche splattered

on to film. And maybe once the old man is finished in his

role, after what he’s seen he can’t go back and no one wants

to see an old man die, not for these kind of prices, so, no

elaborate torture method, just some routine pain, close-ups,

cross cut later with some young thing who doesn’t want to

get his flesh scarred. Then they dump him. Yet there was a

dog present. You can imagine, or maybe you can’t, it does

not matter … you see how these things can so easily happen

and perhaps explain a set of events that somehow eluded

explanation until now.’ The detective coughed, crumpled the

cigarette packet in his fist. ‘Or maybe Jake was the film-maker

and he was killed in a revolt by his subjects, perhaps that is

why the torture done to him was small scale and petty and

his death quick. Maybe some people only get their kicks

thinking they’re Henry VIII, have enough money to build