The Devil's Playground (13 page)

almost looked like the gills of a fish, Jon thought and tried

to suppress the image. Things were horrible enough.

‘Exactly what you see. Cuts. Made with an extremely

sharp, flat-bladed knife or scalpel. At this stage it looks as if

they were made on the day of his death, some healing of the

tissue had started.’

‘Shit.’ Jon looked at the ugly scratches on the old man’s

face. ‘The killer did that?’

‘I guess so.’ The detective turned towards Jon. ‘He had

other scars, much older. You knew about them?’

Jon stared at the detective. Something passed between

them. ‘No. Why should I?’

‘No reason. I thought maybe you saw them when he was

staying with you.’

There it was again, that insinuation. And now he realized

that if he told the detective about what he’d seen that night

in the bathroom, how the man would interpret it, the seedy

and scurrilous conclusions he’d make. He didn’t want to

think about the bloody tissues in the bathroom. That was

something old men deserved to keep private. He’d thought

at the time that the problem stemmed from living on the

streets. He held on to that.

‘He had a large amount of scar tissue, other marks, burns

and cuts and holes that look like piercings … you never saw

anything like that on him?’

‘No,’ Jon replied, thinking how we never really know

anybody, always afraid of getting too close, creating small

walls to cloak what we try in vain to hide from ourselves.

‘Look,’ the detective said as he slowly pulled back the

sheet to reveal the rest of Jake’s body. And the things that

lay engraved upon it.

Jon actually did a double take, like in an old Harold Lloyd

film - the discrepancy between what he saw and his image

of Jake was too large a chasm to cross instantly. He looked

down the old man’s body, feeling strangely as though he was

sneaking a look at a sleeper, an intrusion of privacy no less

invasive because he was dead.

Jake’s body was covered in an intricate topography of scar

tissue, like canyons seen from a helicopter overhead, small

black marks that Jon supposed were burns of some sort and

holes in the skin, tiny punctures that traipsed over his chest

and genitals. His eyes rolled quickly over the expanses of

flesh, singed and folded, brutalized in an untold number of

ways, the tension between not wanting to look and wanting

to. He had to keep glancing back at the face to assure himself

this was the man he once knew.

‘They did all this to him?’ Jon asked, still unable to see

that what lay before him was a whole history, a whole lifetime

of marking and scarring.

‘Some of it. Not all. How well did you know Jake?’

‘Not very. Obviously.’ Jon stared at the body. His eyes

refused to rest on any one spot. He felt sick, looked away,

looked back.

‘Amsterdam can change a person. I’ve seen it happen

many times. There’s something about this city, the idea of

tolerance implicit in it, that seems to draw a certain kind of

person. The kind of person that can sometimes unravel in

this place. There seems to be so much freedom compared

to home but people mistake this freedom, it can lead them

down dangerous roads, roads they cannot come back on.’

The detective trailed off as he pulled the sheet over the old

man, finally laying him to rest, at least in Jon’s mind, though

of course he would suffer more severe mutilations in the

upcoming autopsy. Jon wondered what the detective meant

and whether he was talking about Jake now or about him.

How could a city change a person? Surely it was always there,

this thing that becomes amplified in a certain place, this thing

that draws you to common streets and vistas. He stared at

the detective, not saying anything.

The slab was noiselessly wheeled back into its cubicle and

the door shut with a slight metallic ring that bounced across

the white tiling of the room as the two men stared silently at

their distorted reflections in the gleaming metal door.

‘You want to go for a coffee?’

Jon nodded. He didn’t want to go back to his empty hotel

room. He knew what was waiting for him there. A return

ticket, an unpacked backpack. He had done his job. It was

over now and a pall of anti-climax flooded his chest.

Van Hijn took him around the corner to a coffee shop.

The heady, sweet smell of skunk filled Jon’s nostrils as soon

as they entered. The stereo system screamed out Dylan,

‘Highway 61 Revisited’. God saying to Abraham, ‘Kill me

a son.’

They sat at a far table in the dark, narrow bar, looking out

on one of the canals. Jon watched as people slid into obscured

alcoves, emitting thick purple ribbons of smoke, drenched

in the thumping rhythms of the music. He looked out at the

canal, long, thin barges burning upon the water, the slow

inexorable path of progress, and then back at the interior of

the coffee shop and the sense of time suspended, held

in lieu.

‘Pretty,‘Jon absently remarked as he poured sugar into his

coffee.

The detective snorted, a harsh expulsion of air from his

nose. ‘Yes, there are some things that are still pretty around

here, I suppose. I guess I forget about them, take it for

granted you say?’

‘Yes.’

‘I take it for granted then, seeing so much crime and so

much blood, it’s hard sometimes to wipe that away with just

a charming view or a nice piece of architecture.’

God, he’s depressing, Jon thought, looking at the detective

as he sipped his coffee. He’d made a mistake in accepting

the man’s invitation. Moroseness was the last thing he needed

now. He hated the way that Jake’s body had disgusted him.

That it had felt so alien, so unlike the old man who’d stayed

with him.

The Dylan track came cascading to a halt and in its place

the chug-chug chainsaw rhythm of the Velvets’ ‘Sister Ray’

filled the air around them.

‘Are you a literary man, Mr Reed?’

The question surprised him, not so much that it had come

from the policeman, but that it had come at such a time.

‘Yes, I suppose I am.’

‘Good, I like that in a person. Movies too, I love old

movies. These are the things we need to hold on to, you

understand?’

Jon nodded but he wasn’t so sure he did. Wasn’t sure he

wanted to.

‘These are the things that remain.’

A waitress came over and Van Hijn ordered for both of them. A couple of minutes later she was back, depositing two of the largest slices of cheesecake that Jon had seen this side of the Atlantic.

‘Cheesecake, I love cheesecake. You know they make the best cheesecake here in Amsterdam?’

*No, I didn’t know that.’ Jon welcomed the change of

subject. He didn’t want to think about Jake now.

Van Hijn smiled. ‘I’m trying to give up smoking grass. So

now I’ve become an expert on cheesecake.’

‘It actually keeps you off the stuff?’

‘Yes, funnily enough it works though it does my figure no

favours.’ He patted the small belly that was beginning to

accumulate around his waist.

‘But you still come to coffee shops even though you’re

trying to give up?’

‘Of course. Otherwise I would just be avoiding it — that

never works. You have to be strong in the face of temptation,

that’s what it’s all about. When I can sit here and not want a

joint, even though I’m surrounded by them, then I’ll be

properly cured. You can’t cure yourself of anything by avoidance,

that just highlights how addicted you are — you have to

confront things before they can go away, no?’

‘I suppose. I hadn’t really thought about it that way.’

Though he hadn’t really thought about it at all and was

becoming increasingly confused by the detective’s scattergun

conversation. He wondered whether this was the psychological

equivalent of Columbo’s about-to-walk-out-of-the-door

last-minute question. He reminded himself that he had to be

careful. That the detective wasn’t his friend, that they had

been drawn together by other things and by what each of

them thought they could achieve from this.

‘They also happen to do the best cheesecake in these

places.’ The detective smiled, slowly pouring milk into his

coffee, stirring with a bovine patience that Jon found admirable

and yet somehow unsettling under the circumstances.

They sat silently drinking their coffee. They both sensed

what lurked in these silences but neither could find a way

back. Like people in cafes everywhere they became almost

abstract figures - Man Sitting Over Cup Of Coffee, Man Staring

Out At Canal — or figures from seventeenth-century Dutch

masters, their occupying the same canvas an almost arbitrary

event, their forms occluded and made discrete by their individual

sadness, and Jon knew that it was in moments like

this, when we don’t say anything, that we somehow connect

the most.

The detective paid. Jon thanked him.

‘So, you going to do some sightseeing while you’re

here?’

‘Hadn’t thought about it really. I suppose so. My flight

doesn’t leave until tomorrow afternoon.’

Van Hijn smiled, then grabbed Jon’s wrist. A swift sudden

movement. Brought his face up close. ‘You’re not thinking

of following this thing up yourself?’ he said, not letting go

of his hand.

‘No,’ Jon replied, though he had been thinking about it,

in the morgue, sitting here, wondering what he’d do for the

next twenty-four hours.

‘Good. It’s not your job. Mine, you understand? There are things that you do not comprehend. Things you don’t know about this city. It’ll eat you up. Don’t fuck up my

investigations, understand?’

Jon nodded. His wrist was beginning to hurt.

‘You want to know what happened to your friend, you let

me do it. I don’t want you messing around. I don’t want to hear that they found you in some alley, carved up, because you asked the wrong person the wrong questions, or even the right ones. Go to your hotel. Visit the Van Gogh. Get on your plane tomorrow. This is what you have to do. Your job here is done. I’m grateful. But that’s all there is.’

He unclasped his hand. Jon stared down at his wrist, red and raw. The sudden change in the detective had frightened him and he only nodded, wanting to get away, get back to

his room.

We understand each other then?’ Van Hijn said.

‘Yes,’ Jon replied.

He sat in his hotel room and listened to the rain outside. It

sounded so different from London rain. More percussive,

denser somehow. An all-encompassing drip and drap beating

on the roofs of the houses and swallowed by the dark canals.

He stretched out on the bed. Feeling tired, still shaken from

the previous day, the cold morgue, the unsheathed body, Jake.

There was no reason for him to stay. His job was done.

Jake had been positively identified. And yet he couldn’t stop

thinking about what he’d seen. The wounds and injuries, that

grotesque tapestry of pain. Though he’d identified him, at

some deeper level he hadn’t quite recognized the old man,

as if the corpse on the slab had been a twin brother, identical

in outward appearance yet with a wholly divergent lifestyle.

He found himself wondering whether Jake’s story was even

true — if there was so much he didn’t know about the man

then nothing was certain.

He’d woken to the sound of a Swedish couple in the room

next door fighting and screaming. He lay still and tried to

focus on the words they were saying, staring at the ceiling,

hearing another couple break up, the fury and exasperation

of their words transcending any language barrier as the

screaming rose in pitch and the door finally slammed.

The next thing he heard was a toilet flushing nearby and

a group of Australians laughing boisterously in the hallway.

He knew that as long as he could listen to tiiese ghostiy

voices, these invisible lives lived out behind walls, he

wouldn’t have to think about his own situation, his own life.

Maybe it was only meeting Jake that had awoken him. It

sometimes seemed as if he’d lived the last few years in an

insulated silence, only the sound of his own voice to quell

his fears. Of course Jake had reminded him of his father, but

more than that, he reminded him of the father he never had,

the one he’d always wished and prayed for.

He lit a cigarette and tried to focus on the sounds from

outside his room, to pick up a conversation, the fragment of

a goodbye, but he could hear only the whistling of water

pipes branching through the walls. It seemed that his fellow

residents were all out, braving the rain and hitting the galleries and museums, canals and coffee shops. He checked his

watch. His flight was at five. He had most of the day.

He could stroll around unplanned, he could check out the

Rembrandts at the Rijks. But he knew it wasn’t going to be

any of those things. He found his city guide and marked out

a route: the shortest distance between the hotel and the

Jewish Historical Museum, the place that Jake had talked so