The Devil's Playground (31 page)

I was torturing him or something?’ he said to Van Hijn.

‘They always scream, you know.’

Van Hijn lowered the gun. Another stupid mistake. It

seemed that he was making more and more of them recently.

His stomach was trying to claw its way into his chest. He

saw a door behind the piercer. A closet? Instrument cupboard?

He noticed the thick new padlock on the outside,

smelled the heady mix of ether and ammonia that saturated

the room. ‘You Quirk?’ The old man nodded grudgingly. ‘I

need to ask you some questions.’ The piercer looked so

much like William Burroughs it was disconcerting and he

found it hard to meet his gaze.

‘It can’t wait?’

‘No.’

Quirk put down the clamp. Walked towards the detective.

Van Hijn gave him the photos. The old man looked at

them. Shook his head.

‘Never seen him before,’ he said, his accent breaking

through for the first time. Been here a long time, Van Hijn

thought, almost undetectable. ‘Look again,’ he said.

‘You think I’m blind? You think just because I’m old I

can’t see?’ He threw the photos at Van Hijn. The detective

let them flutter to the floor.

‘No, I just don’t think you looked closely enough. Pick

them up and look again.’

Quirk stared at him. It would go either of two ways, Van

Hijn knew, and his hand slipped back down to his gun just

in case. The moment hung between them. And then Quirk

bent down, retrieved the photos, flicked through them again.

‘No.’ And gave them back.

There was not much else Van Hijn could do. The old man

was worried about something, that much was certain, but it

could have been any shabby secret. ‘Thank you for your

time. I’ll be back,’ he said.

‘I’m sure you will, detective.’ The old man’s smile was as

thin as a paper cut and just as unpleasant. ‘I’m sure we’ll see

each other again. Now if you’ll excuse me I have work to get

back to.’

As Van Hijn left the room, he counted his steps.

Outside, the rain seemed to have got worse. He pulled out

his small torch, flicked it on, relieved to see that it was

working. Groups of men passed him heading for the window

girls. Even in this weather, Van Hijn thought, as he circled

the building twice.

Yes, there was definitely something wrong. Something

that didn’t add up.

He circled it again, counting his steps this time.

The basement he’d been in seemed to be smaller than the

perimeter of the first-floor premises. Impossible, he knew.

He paced around again just to make sure. Same number. The

ground floor was stretched out about ten feet longer and

five foot wider than what he’d estimated the basement area

to be. Even if he’d been slightly mistaken it wouldn’t account

for the disparity.

Of course he knew all about them. Hidden rooms were a

part of the city’s legend. There was even a house you could

visit that hid a whole Catholic chapel behind the swivelling

occlusion of its fireplace. And of course the much-visited

Anne Frankhuis, many more throughout the old quarter,

priest-holes and last resorts, the small cramped refuges of

the hunted and hated.

He walked through the rain, buzzing on the new information,

heading back towards his flat. A video, Woody Allen

perhaps, something to take his mind off the day, to ease

the welcome respite of night. Wipe the whole thing clean.

Something to make up for all the horror he’d seen on that

computer screen.

The piercing parlour would need to be staked out, the

architectural incongruities reported, but that could wait until

tomorrow. Tomorrow was a monster, flashing its teeth,

gaping and hungry and he wanted to put it off for as long as

he could. He knew that he had to get hold of those films.

That the key to the tramp’s murder lay there, and more, for

he knew that all these deaths were linked. He thought about

Jon and what he was hoping to find. Whether he’d find it,

and if he did, would it be what he thought he was looking

for. Or just what he’d been running from.

They caught up with him three blocks from his flat. He was

so distracted that he didn’t notice them until it was too late.

Too late for his gun too as he felt his wrist being pulled away

and then the clear, sickening sound of it breaking, the pure,

hot dagger of pain that shot through his body. The rest

became a blur as he landed on the cobblestones and felt the

needles piercing him. He furiously scrabbled about, trying to

protect his side with his hands but the needles still found

their way in. There were always gaps to be exploited, prodded,

entered. He could hear laughing and what sounded like the

pitter-patter of his blood trickling on the stone. He tried to

stand but found that there was nothing left in his legs. The

pavement swallowed him, hard and cold and wet. The stars

twinkled unnoticed above and eventually he was left on his

own, the crumpled form of a man, leaking, dimming, falling

into the black night that he’d spent so long running away

from.

‘Use the clamps.’

‘Do you want me to?’

‘I just said so, didn’t I?’

‘Okay.’ He reached over and picked up the plastic pieces,

almost like office stationery he thought, and placed them

gently on her nipples. Then he kissed her, pulled her bottom

lip out with his teeth and bit down on it, not hard enough

to draw blood perhaps, but hard enough to draw a moan

from her.

‘Let them snap shut,’ she said.

So he did and watched her nipples whiten and the skin of

her breasts warm. ‘Twist them,’ she cried out as he was

fucking her and he did, enjoying the way she moaned and

writhed under the pain. ‘More,’ she said and he dutifully

twisted them again, watching the small drops of blood escape

the plastic and dribble down her breasts.

‘Tell me about Beatrice’s mum,’ she said, getting out of bed

and slipping a Richmond Fontaine CD into the player.

‘No.’ Jon stared out of the window. The visit with Mrs

De Roedel had left him drained. He couldn’t really explain

the rush of feelings he’d had in that antique house and wasn’t

in any mood to try.

Suze sat up on the bed. ‘What do you mean, no?’

‘I mean, I don’t want to talk about it.’

‘Why?’

‘Why? Because I don’t want to.’

‘Fuck, Jon.’ She got up off the bed, cranked the music up,

way up, turned away.

‘What’s the matter with you?’

‘With me? I just wish you’d tell me more. You keep

everything so close to your chest, you don’t ever tell me how

you feel.’

He got up, exasperated by her tone, by the things she

wanted from him which he found so hard to surrender. ‘I

don’t know how I feel, Suze, not really. I put it into words,

it’s something different, no longer what I feel.’

She snapped her head back towards him. He could see

she was crying. ‘You’re just like my parents.’

‘I’m not your parents.’

‘No, but you close yourself off like they did. After that day, they never said what they felt.’

‘Perhaps it scared them too much.’

‘All the more reason to talk about it.’

Jon got up, moved towards her, took her hand, felt it limp

in his. ‘Sometimes talking just disfigures things.’

She pulled her hand away. She felt unreasonably angry

and she knew that it had to do with Beatrice’s father’s death.

Dominic had sent him the photos after all. That stupid boy.

Killed him almost as surely as someone had killed Beatrice.

She spat out a piece of tobacco from her mouth. ‘Excuses. I

heard them all through my adolescence. Mom, Dad — they

never said anything, let the silence devour them, they never

thought about what it was like for me.’

He felt a terrible sadness in her words, a world that was

closer to his than even she thought, and he took her by the

waist and pressed himself so close to her that their mouths

were unable to speak, to do more damage.

Want to do some mushrooms?’ she asked later.

‘Mushrooms?’ He hadn’t done mushrooms since he was

sixteen and they hadn’t left any pleasant memories, being

sick, yes that was it, no transcendental visions only the cold

hard kiss of marbled reality.

‘Let’s do some mushrooms and go out on the town.’

‘But it’ll be hell, it’s Friday night.’

‘All the more reason.’ She pulled the sheets off her and

moved towards him, ‘C’mon, Jon, let yourself go, have some

fun.’ She grabbed his cock which was semi-hard and began

playing with it while he thought about all the bad things that

could happen to him if he took mushrooms on a Friday

night in Amsterdam.

‘It tastes like shit,’ he said, sipping the foul lukewarm tea that Suze had made, unable to quite believe he was doing this.

He wondered if he was still trying to impress her in some

way.

‘Just hold your nose and down it, if you don’t like the

taste.’ She drank her mushroom tea, then lit a cigarette.

Upended a wrap of white powder on the CD case. Chopped

it with a credit card into two lines. Richard Buckner was

singing about distance, love and alcohol. ‘This’ll get us

started.’ She bent down, snorted the line, handed Jon the

rolled-up note, watched him do the same. ‘We’ve got about

half an hour of normality before the ‘shrooms kick in, how

do you want to use it?’

He tied her up. He was so sick of it. It took all the

spontaneity out of sex, this endless preparation, this setting

up and marking off. But he didn’t want to argue, afraid of

what schisms it might yet open up between them. And he

kept telling himself it was nothing, just rigmarole, something

he should be able to accept. He tied the final knot, looked

down at her. She was smiling.

‘I want you to rape me, Jon.’

He stared at her, not sure he’d heard right. ‘What did you

say?’

‘I want you to go out, come back in. Pretend you’re a

burglar. Come upon me like this. I want you to fuck me, Jon,

rape me.’

He pulled back, swung to the side of the bed. ‘You’re fucking

crazy,’ he said. He could feel the coke running through his

blood, the sense of power and decision it gave him.

‘Jon, please.’

‘No. There’s no fucking way, Suze. This is already too

much. I hate doing this. I do it for you but it takes a lot out

of it for me — but that, what the fuck, are you crazy?’

‘Don’t you think most women have a secret fantasy of

being raped? Every woman adores a fascist, the boot in the

heart, the brute leer, didn’t you ever read that one?’

‘No, I didn’t and maybe they do, I don’t know. I just can’t

do it, Suze, might as well ask me to burn you. How do you

think we can go on after that?’

‘It’s only a game,’ she said.

‘It’s never only a game.’ He got up, turned the CD off.

Leaned down and untied her arms. ‘I’m going out. I need to

be alone.’

‘But the mushrooms. You can’t go out alone, Jon, not

with all that inside you.’

‘You think it’s any better here, tying you up, having you

pleading with me to rape you? I think I’ll take my chances

outside.’

The street was like a river of bodies, merging and coupling,

flowing slowly down towards him. The faces were all blank

like the discarded early sketches of a painter, half-conceived

souls that oozed through the alleyways and across the canals

as he tried to swim past them.

There was a strange smell in the air, heavy and chemical, and every cigarette he lit tasted of meat. He felt ready to burst, to hit anyone who got in his way, who tried to fuck with

him. He didn’t know where he was going, didn’t care. He

moved out of the way of a pack of elderly tourists marching

towards him with all the power and precision of a Paulus

Panzer attack. His nausea had disappeared and the early

feelings of disorientation replaced by a warm fuzziness that

felt like something better. Even the pain in his ankle had

finally gone.

Everyone was eyeballing him. Everyone looked mean. Hate

filled their eyes and had etched their faces into grotesque

grimaces like gargoyles he’d once seen in France. He concentrated

on the buildings, trying to understand where he was,

what he was doing. He felt sharp twinges of pain and he

wondered whether his liver was about to go or whether it

was his kidneys or his blood that was wrong. He tried

smoking some more cigarettes but they still tasted of meat

and after a drag or two he had to throw them away. A man

turned to him and began saying something but it sounded

like the voice of the teacher from a Peanuts cartoon and he

tried to relay to the man that this was so but he’d forgotten

where his mouth was.

The buildings were falling down. Obscuring the sky as they

huddled together over the dwarf streets. Everything went

black as the melted habitations formed a canopy over him.