Into the Night: Inspector Rykel Book 2 (Amsterdam Quartet) (27 page)

Tuesday, 11 May
13.29

‘Let’s hope this place hasn’t got a crazed painter in it,’ said Kees as he slowed the car down.

It was another agricultural building, not dissimilar to the first, but it looked in worse condition, the wood weathered and pitted. This time a whole combine harvester was parked outside, rust rupturing the paintwork, and a row of water butts stood sentinel along one side of the structure. Tanya was brushing mud off her jeans in the seat next to him, the sound just audible over the engine. She’d been silent all the way, ever since she’d acted all weird at the estate agent’s. But then he had seen she’d been throwing up in the mud, so he figured she wasn’t feeling too good.

I hope it’s not catching
, he thought as he parked the car up on a verge and they both got out.
Now that we’ve shared fluids.

He could hear ticking from the bonnet. Trailing his hand on the metal as he walked round the front of the vehicle he could feel its warmth – for a second he found it comforting.

Things had got complicated, but despite the fact that they’d slept together he knew she wasn’t going to be able to drop her investigation, even if she wanted to.

And then, outside the estate agent’s, she’d handed him a bit of paper with a name written neatly across the centre, and an address.

The name was not one he recognized, but after it she’d written, ‘Paul?’ When he’d tried to ask her about it she’d refused to talk.

Was she doing this because they’d slept together? Because she liked him? Or was it a way to end anything before it’d even started? Pay him off.

And one thing he’d not really even considered in all of this was Jaap.

If she tells Jaap what we did …
The thought trailed off. It wasn’t even worth thinking about.

The only chance he had was making sure that he was never linked with Paul.

So he had to get to the address and find out if Tanya’s lead was right.

The question is
,
what if it is Paul?
he thought.
What do I do then?

They were walking down a track, a small ditch with flowing water hugging the left-hand side, the soft trickle as it filtered through the grass overhang from the verges like something from a New Age relaxation track.

‘Same again?’ Tanya said in a hushed voice when they were about fifty metres away.

‘Why’s it always me that has to go round the back? And anyway, it looks like the other place; I don’t reckon there’ll be another way in or out.’

She looked at him – he figured she wasn’t able to tell if he was joking or not. He wasn’t sure himself.

‘Okay,
I’ll
go round the back,’ she said, and she split off to the left before Kees could say anything.

He watched as she jumped the ditch and skirted the field. There were sheep dotted around, heads down. One
raised its head to look at Tanya as she passed about five metres from it. Kees could see its lower jaw moving, a swaying, circular motion.

He was struck by the thought that the woman walking away from him into the fog meant a lot to him.

Meant more than he’d realized.

And yet she was seeing another man, and Kees had an illness which in all likelihood was going to kill him, or at the very least leave him unable to do the most basic things for himself.

There’d probably be a stage when he couldn’t even wipe his own ass.

He wasn’t sure he should get Tanya involved in that. He wasn’t sure she’d be up for it either.

Not unless she had a hidden kinky side, which given what he knew she’d been through with her foster father, he thought unlikely.

How did everything get so fucked?
he wondered as Tanya disappeared around the back of the building.

The day he’d had the first test results back he’d been off shift, and he’d sat around for ages, staring at the bit of paper.

Then he’d screwed it up into a ball and chucked it in the bin.

Then he’d taken it out of the bin and uncrumpled it, ripped it into tiny pieces, emptied them into an ashtray and torched the lot with a lighter.

He’d left the flat, walking fast, not really seeing what was around him, too caught up in images of his future.

Or what was left of it.

He’d been going to the meetings Jaap had told him to
and had been working at it. He’d done the whole confessional thing – Hi-I’m-Kees-and-I’m-a-drug-addict – sat and listened to the other people in the circle, put on a contrite face when required, murmured supportive noises at the right moments and generally behaved like a model citizen trying to get his life back on track.

Fifty-seven days he’d reached, not a bad number for a first attempt. But day fifty-eight had been when the letter arrived, and after hours of walking he’d found himself back at his flat with enough coke to pay the Swiss finishing school fees of a South American drug baron’s daughter.

And it didn’t take long after that for things to really get out of control.

He knew he should never have accepted the offer of credit, knew that there would be some kind of payback required, but had gone ahead and said yes anyway. The way he felt in those days and weeks after the diagnosis – he even hated the very word – wasn’t conducive to long-term thinking.

So he needed to put aside thoughts of Tanya. She was with Jaap for a start, and Kees didn’t have a future he could offer her.

Fuck! I could use a line right now
, he thought.

His phone buzzed a message, Tanya saying there was no exit at the back and that she was coming back.

He looked over at the building. Nothing was moving anywhere. He couldn’t hear a sound. Wherever Jaap’s kid was, it wasn’t here. He felt thirsty and headed back to the car, hoping there’d be an unopened bottle of something. Anything.

He cranked open the door and was rummaging around under the front seat when he heard Tanya’s footsteps behind him. Just as she reached him the radio shot out some static. Kees automatically put his hand out and turned the volume up.

‘… officer kidnapped at the ICTY. Last seen proceeding with the suspect north out of Den Haag in a white Citroën, licence 9JCW76. All units in the area report in.’

Kees turned to look at Tanya; her face said what he was thinking.

‘You think it’s …?’ she said.

He pulled out his phone, dialled Jaap. It kept ringing out to voicemail.

He called the station over the radio.

‘Who’s the kidnapped officer?’

While waiting for an answer he looked over to the field of sheep again, this time noticing that one of them was lying on its back, four feet in the air like an upturned footstool.

‘Inspector Jaap Rykel,’ came the response.

Kees sat back and turned his head to Tanya.

They just looked at each other.

Tuesday, 11 May
14.12

Jaap couldn’t believe they’d made it out of Den Haag without being caught.

But the small size of the car had proved useful, able to nip through gaps the larger police cruisers hadn’t. And the fog had helped.

Now they’d switched. He and Isovic had dumped the car and boosted another, and although it probably only gave them a half-hour advantage – it wouldn’t take the police long to work out what they’d done – thirty minutes was better than nothing.

Now he didn’t need to concentrate so much on driving and had blocked out all thoughts of what he’d just done, he was able to try and get more from Isovic.

‘So now I’ve got you out I think you need to start talking. This person you’re taking me to, how come he knows where Nikolic is?’

‘He just does.’

‘Why did you change your mind about testifying against Matkovic? You said he killed your son; don’t you want to see him punished?’

Isovic didn’t answer at first, staring out of the side window at the fog.

‘Is sitting in warm cell for the rest of life punishment? Food three times a day? Medical care? Is that punishment?’

Jaap was still trying to work out what was going on.

Seeing the look in Isovic’s eyes back in the cell when he’d told him about the death of his son had sparked something off.

A truck’s headlights zoomed out of the fog ahead of them, the light blinding. The car rocked sideways as the truck sped past. Something was pooling in Jaap’s stomach.

He figured, based on some thoughts which were going on, that it was dread.

‘We heard rumours that they were coming to our village. But we had nowhere to go. And then one day we saw them coming. They had army jeeps, and they were driving up the main road towards us. It was in the evening – they’d arrive in about two hours, maybe less – so we had big decision. We didn’t have many weapons, so we decide to move out, further up the mountain. Maybe they turn up, see no one and leave.’

‘And this was Matkovic who was coming?’ said Jaap, his fears being confirmed. The flashes he’d had earlier, the ones which had stayed out of reach, suddenly came together.

He knew what was going on, which made his breaking Isovic out even worse than it already was.

‘Yes, him and his men. We only find out later who he was when he … when he kill my son. We got women and children together and we leave, into the night, higher up the mountain. But they follow us.’

Isovic stopped talking, his story broken off. But it didn’t take a genius to work out what happened next.

And Jaap now knew what that had led to, what had pushed Isovic to the Netherlands, at first to testify against
Matkovic and then to change his mind and try and secure his release.

He glanced across at Isovic, catching his profile.

Would he be capable of that?
he thought as he flicked his eyes back to the road.

There was a question he needed to ask Isovic, but if he did he risked showing his hand; if Isovic knew what Jaap thought he’d worked out – that Isovic and maybe his friend had been responsible for the headless bodies – then he’d most likely duck out at the first opportunity.

Being held for contempt of court was one thing, multiple murder was quite another.

Red brake lights flared in the fog ahead. Jaap slowed down, the high whine of the motor dropping as he did so. He checked the route on Saskia’s phone – they’d switched back at ICTY – but he knew he couldn’t risk keeping it live for much longer. If someone reviewed the CCTV images, which they were undoubtedly doing by now, there was a chance they would have worked out he wasn’t exactly the classic kidnap victim.

From there it was still a couple of steps to realizing that Saskia had been involved and thinking of tracking her phone, but he needed to stay ahead, not get caught out on something stupid.

He also needed to be reachable, if Tanya and Kees found something he had to know.

Saskia should have called them by now
, he thought. Meaning that they had nothing to report; they hadn’t found Floortje, otherwise they’d have called him. He wondered how many addresses they were having to search.

A few minutes later Jaap pulled up at the end of a road
in Amstelveen, Amsterdam’s prosperous southern neighbour. The fog was thinning slightly, allowing the trees on either side of the residential street to narrow into the distance. He killed the engine, letting his ears adjust to the silence.

He was relying on the word of a grief-stricken man. A man who’d let that same grief turn him into a killer, someone capable of cutting other human beings’ heads off.

And he was about to meet his partner.

Tuesday, 11 May
15.14

The fog was so thick it was like dusk.

Tanya flicked down the rear-view mirror; a car behind was giving her the full-beam treatment.

It’d only taken them three minutes to establish the building was clear, all the while her brain absorbing the news of Jaap’s kidnap.

She’d been trying to work out what had gone wrong, and her working theory was that Nikolic had somehow got into the ICTY and taken Jaap, maybe to further pressure Saskia into losing the trial. But she didn’t know how that could have happened.

How could Nikolic have known where to find him? And why would he, already having got Floortje, risk a move like that just to get Jaap?

Too many questions for which she couldn’t get answers, and time was running out.

So she’d made the decision to head back into town; they needed to increase the speed they were covering the remaining buildings and the only way to do that was to split up. For that Kees would need a car.

‘Fuck,’ said Kees leaning forward to look in the wing mirror. ‘What’s wrong with this guy?’

‘Guess he doesn’t know we’re cops,’ said Tanya, torn between slowing down just to really piss the driver behind off and the need to get on with the search.

‘Tell you what,’ said Kees reaching into the glove compartment.

Tanya thought he’d go for the detachable roof light, but he left that and fished out a torch. He flipped it over, whacked the beam on and shone it over his shoulder.

‘Careful you don’t make him crash,’ said Tanya, glancing in the rear-view again.

‘How’d you like that, you fucker?’ whispered Kees as he jiggled the torch around.

The car eventually flicked its beams off full.

Kees put the torch away.

‘I must be getting wise in my old age,’ he said. ‘There was a time I’d’ve just waved my gun around.’

Tanya knew he was trying to draw her out, but she just couldn’t raise the energy to respond. He’d changed since they’d slept together, and she wasn’t sure she liked that.

Which only meant her earlier thoughts about rough treatment probably held true, and that was definitely not something she wanted to think about right now.

‘I’m sure he’s okay,’ said Kees after a while. ‘Jaap can take care of himself, you know? Shit, what with all that Eastern stuff he can probably meditate his way out of whatever he’s got himself into.’

‘I … There’s something you should know,’ said Tanya, her throat and mouth drying out, the pit of her stomach dropping away from her. ‘About Jaap. I—’

‘You’re fucking him, right?’

Tanya kept her eyes on the road, the central line bobbing up and down.

‘No big surprise. Everyone knows,’ continued Kees when she didn’t say anything.

‘Really?’

‘Yeah, there’ve been rumours going round the station for months. Did you think people didn’t know?’

She had. And she’d been stupid to. She saw that now.

‘So when we …’ She couldn’t bring herself to say it. ‘You knew?’

‘Uhh … look, about that,’ he said, suddenly interested in something outside his side window.

‘It’s all right, let’s not say anything,’ she said, clicking the car radio on, twisting the dial to find something. Anything.

‘
… .and the so-called Twitter killer looks to still be at large. Sources close to the police aren’t giving much away, though the unofficial word here is that they may soon be making an arrest. But I’ve just received unverified reports, and I must stress they are unverified at this stage, that the inspector in charge of the investigation has been involved in some kind of incident at the
ICTY
in Den Haag. This is Inspector Jaap Rykel, who held the disastrous press conference earlier today claiming he’d found the killer just as another body was discovered. I’ve not been able find out any precise details as of yet – the police are staying tight-lipped at present – but one unofficial report suggests the stress of the failure of his investigation may have some bearing on this troubling incident.’

‘Thank you, Annette. Our reporter there, Annette Groot, in Amsterdam. And now we’re going to our weekly agricultural show, where a special investigation into the genetic lineage of the Friesland cow is unravelled, with surprising results.
’

‘I’ve been worried about that,’ said Kees, reaching out and snapping the radio off.

‘What?’

‘The Friesland cow.’

‘Yeah. Keeps me up at night.’

By the time they made it to the station, traffic had intensified. Tanya dropped Kees off at the front after they’d split up the remaining properties. The plan was to scope them out, see if there were any signs that Floortje was being held.

‘If you think you’ve found her give me a call; don’t go in alone unless you have to.’

‘Same goes for you,’ he said as he turned, heading down to the carpool.

Now she was here she suddenly got the urge to go in and tell Smit what was going on. She checked the dashboard, just over five hours to the deadline. That gave them just enough time to get to all the properties.

She sat there for a few moments, fingers drumming on the tacky steering wheel, before jamming the indicator on and pulling out.

The best thing she could do for Jaap was to find his daughter.

Find her before Nikolic followed through with his threat.

Which, having read his file, she had no doubt he’d do.