The Wrong Girl (3 page)

First winter in Amsterdam. She was a good mother, had done her research. Natalya had to remember this forever. They’d walk out into the busy streets, watch Saint Nicholas ride through the city on horseback. Listen to him address the children from the balcony of the theatre in Leidseplein. Then eat chips and mayonnaise together, giggle like two little girls. And, finally, go back to the gable room in Oude Nieuwstraat where Hanna would tuck Natalya into the little bed then find a free cabin for the night, strip down to her bra and pants, sit on the stool at the window, wait for a customer. Answer the bell. Negotiate the fee. Open the door. Shut the curtains. Close her mind. Get the job done. Wait for the next one.

Chantal caught them on the stairs. Natalya’s head went down at the sight of her. The two didn’t get on. It was understandable. The Filipina kid didn’t try to hide what she did. She was proud of her dark, alluring looks, boasted of the money they brought in. Sometimes Hanna Bublik had no choice but to leave her daughter alone with this young woman.

‘Wait in the hall,’ she said and watched the pink jacket bob down the stairs.

‘He’s been on at me again,’ the girl told her when Natalya was gone.

‘Yilmaz?’

‘Cem.’

She was wearing a skimpy T-shirt, what looked like a bikini underneath. Hanna wondered how this kid would feel the day she realized she was getting old.

‘I don’t want to work for anyone. I told you.’

‘You work for someone every time you take off your pants. Don’t you?’

Hanna reached out and touched the girl’s shoulder, turned it. The badge of ownership was there in her skin, bright-blue, crudely done. Two letters in a fancy script, the initials of his name, ‘CY’.

‘I don’t want any man’s tattoo on my back. Tell him thanks but no thanks.’

‘Didn’t hurt so much,’ Chantal grumbled.

‘It’s not about the pain,’ she said and wondered if this kid had any idea of the things she’d seen in her twenty-eight years.

‘Two thousand euros he gave me just for getting that.’ She tapped the blue scrawl. It was only a couple of weeks old. The sardonic smile dropped for a moment. ‘Gets worse if you hold out. And I don’t have to sit in some stupid window any more.’

A voice rose from down the stairs.

‘Mum? Are we going?’

Hanna Bublik forced herself to smile. She needed Chantal. Sometimes anyway.

‘Thanks for looking after Natalya this morning.’

‘Don’t work mornings,’ the girl said. ‘Don’t need to.’

‘Are you coming to meet Sinterklaas?’

A grin. Quick and insincere.

‘Got a sugar daddy of my own to see, thanks. Cem fixed it.’

There was something else she wanted to say.

‘Nat told me she has nightmares. About monsters. Something big and black. Coming for you two. Up the stairs.’

‘Natalya. Nightmares . . . ?’

‘Monsters in broad daylight.’ The Filipina girl laughed a little. ‘Kids . . .’

‘Have fun,’ Hanna said then walked downstairs and took her daughter by her hand out into Oude Nieuwstraat.

She asked Natalya about the monsters. They’d turned up a year or two after Gori. She thought they’d left them behind in Georgia.

The answer when it came didn’t amount to much. Chantal Santos, a dumb whore who was getting herself deep into something she didn’t understand, probably got more.

‘What did they look like?’ Hanna asked even though she knew the answer. Could picture them herself.

Black demons full of smoke and thunder, fire in their guts, alongside sparks and tiny forks of lightning. The kind that had swarmed over Gori that bloody night the world collapsed around them.

‘The way they always do,’ her daughter replied in a small, sure voice and left it there.

Hanna pulled her cheap black nylon anorak around her. It was cold out on the street.

‘There are no monsters,’ she said. ‘If there were I’d kill them.’

Arms folded, as sceptical as the uniform woman beside her, Laura Bakker listened to the story of the woman called Renata Kuyper. Smartly dressed with neat brown hair, a narrow, anxious face and a Belgian accent. She and her daughter had ridden to the square in a cargo trike from the Herenmarkt, parked in a side street, watched the parade. All the way from home to Leidseplein a Black Pete had followed them on a rusty bike. Watching, not coming close. Not offering sweets. Just stalking.

The uniform officer glanced at Bakker and rolled her eyes.

‘Why would he do that?’ Bakker asked as the band in front of the theatre struck up again with cheesy festive music.

‘How would I know?’

There was a shrill and edgy air about her.

‘It’s Sinterklaas. We’ve got lots of Black Petes around,’ Bakker said. ‘Hundreds. Perhaps you saw more than one . . .’

‘He was on a bike. Following us. Watching us. He was wearing green . . .’

‘Lots of them wear green,’ the uniform woman cut in.

‘Look . . . look . . .’

‘Perhaps you and your daughter should go home,’ Bakker suggested. ‘You seem upset.’

There was a roar from the square followed by frantic applause. Sinterklaas had appeared on his horse, surrounded by an army of Black Petes. Soon he’d be on the balcony and the crowd would go quiet for the ceremonial speeches.

‘There,’ the woman said. ‘There he is . . .’

She was pointing at a green figure close by the entrance to one of the narrow side lanes, filled with tourist restaurants.

With a short sigh Bakker turned to look, closely, the way she’d learned through working with Vos. He didn’t just see the world around him. The people in it. How they fitted into the narrow, sometimes chaotic streets of Amsterdam. He thought about them. Tried to imagine what brought these men and women here, and the story behind them.

When she did that Bakker found she was interested in what she saw. The Black Pete was of medium height, blacked up, a large curly wig, green satin costume, mob cap, baggy trousers. He had a red sack that ought to be full of sweets to hand out to the kids. But he wasn’t doing that. It was as if the sack scarcely existed. He was looking round. Watching for something.

This one didn’t have a rusty bike but he was wrong somehow.

Vos and Van der Berg were still engaged with the drunk who looked ready to get punchy. Bakker told the woman and her daughter to stay with the uniform officer, then walked over to say hello.

So many of these odd characters were around at that moment. There were even a couple abseiling down one of the buildings. Anyone who felt like getting the costume, handing out some sweets and having fun could lose themselves in the disguise.

‘There’s a woman who thinks you’re following her. I’m sure it’s just a mistake.’

No response. Just two very white and angry eyes staring at her from beneath the shiny, curly wig.

‘Perhaps if you could show me some ID.’

A grunt and then his gloved hands went beneath the loose elastic of the green trousers, fiddled around and came up with something she recognized straight away.

It was the card for Koeman, another plain-clothes agent in Vos’s team.

She looked him up and down and stifled a giggle. He folded his green arms and tapped his right foot on the pavement.

‘Is this work?’ she asked. ‘Or what you do off duty?’

He was a miserable bastard at the best of times. It seemed a worthwhile question.

‘What do you think?’

‘I don’t know. That’s why I asked.’

He closed his eyes for a moment.

‘I’m street surveillance.’

She pointed to the woman who’d complained. Renata Kuyper was jabbing a finger at the uniformed officer again.

‘Did you follow her all the way here from Herenmarkt?’

‘No,’ he said with a sarcastic whine. ‘Why would I do that?’

‘She says a Black Pete did. He was wearing green.’

Koeman reached into his bag and glumly offered her a spicy
kruidnoot.

The cheesy music had stopped which meant they could hear Renata Kuyper yelling at the top of her voice alongside the rising clamour of the crowd. Bakker glanced up at the theatre balcony. Sinterklaas was there, along with the mayor, marching towards the microphone.

Something was missing.

The girl in the pink jacket.

Bakker strode quickly back. Koeman followed.

‘Henk! Henk!’ she was screaming into her phone. ‘For God’s sake where are you? Get down here, will you? Saskia just wandered off . . .’

She stopped, glared at Koeman.

‘He’s a duty police officer,’ Bakker explained.

The female cop was getting irate.

‘Like we said. It’s Sinterklaas. Kids go missing. We’ll find her for you. Jesus. You don’t need to make such a fuss.’

The woman was still on the phone screaming at what Bakker could only assume was voicemail.

‘We’ll find her . . .’ Bakker repeated.

The racket had attracted Pieter Vos’s attention. He patted the drunk on the back and sent him off towards the exit then wandered over. Vos and Van der Berg seemed to recognize Koeman immediately. Perhaps he did this every year.

Bakker looked at them, radios in hand, alert, ready.

‘We’ve got a missing girl. Pink jacket.’ She turned to the woman. ‘Name?’

Renata Kuyper gave up on the phone.

‘Saskia Kuyper. She’s only eight.’

Very like her mother, Bakker remembered. The same strained, narrow, pale face.

Vos nodded, introduced himself, was starting to explain how they had officers trained to deal with lost children throughout the square. Every year plenty went missing. They were always found.

Then Sinterklaas was at the microphone. Gruff, hearty tones booming throughout Leidseplein.

‘Children of Amsterdam—’

The first explosion boomed through the square, deep, loud, painful. Alongside the noise came a blinding light that left those close enough to witness it reeling, stumbling to their knees.

A long, silent moment of shock followed. Then a frantic, high-pitched scream. The first of many.

That evening, when Marnixstraat had time to catch breath, they would establish the outrage was nothing like as threatening as it had seemed at the time. The explosions came from flash grenades, frightening but largely harmless. A duty policeman suffered minor burns when he tried to remove one close to a party of children near the theatre. Seven spectators were treated in hospital for shock, concussion from the stampede that followed, and a couple of broken limbs.

It could have been so much worse. But, like everyone else in Leidseplein that afternoon, Hanna Bublik and her young daughter Natalya knew none of this. All they saw was pandemonium. As Sinterklaas began to speak from the theatre balcony something streaked through the air, fell close to the front of the building, then exploded with a sudden flash and a roar of sound. Two more explosions followed and by then the square, packed with thousands of people, many of them young children, was beyond control.

She’d seen warfare first hand in Gori. Knew what a grenade sounded like, recognized the bright blinding light and the deafening racket that followed straight after. When the third missile crashed into the crowded square there was only a grim determination beneath the familiar panic.

Flee.

Survive.

Hide
.

Without a word she grabbed Natalya’s hand and dragged the girl close to her side, looked round. Saw a sea of terrified, puzzled faces. One moment Leidseplein was a placid mass of humanity. The next a howling mob. She barely knew this part of the city. Had no idea where to turn.

Gori haunted her for a multitude of reasons. There she’d been young, innocent, afraid. While her husband prowled outside their cottage, gun in hand, swearing to protect his wife and baby, she’d cowered with Natalya in an attic, wondering how the world had come to this.

All they wanted was security and a little money. The games the politicians played, setting cultures and languages against one another for their own private ends, meant nothing in the special, holy place called home. And here was the monster, tanks and soldiers, military vehicles, heavy weapons, circling the town, splitting it into two parties, victors and defeated joined by blood.

When she escaped – barely – with her life and the tiny child in her arms, glimpsing only the mangled corpse of her husband near the lane that led to their modest home, she’d sworn she’d never cower again. Next time if the blackness fell she’d fight, make sure no one came near the ones she loved.

In the mayhem of Leidseplein that meant one thing only: think of yourself and your child, no one else. Elbows jabbing, her left arm clutching Natalya’s pink jacket, she launched herself into the fray. There was a narrow lane behind them. Not so many people. The rest seemed to be racing towards the broader streets.

Head down, cursing in a language none of them would understand, she made for the space away from the smoke and commotion in the square.

You don’t apologize. You don’t make excuses.

This was the world she knew, one that left her to survive on her own. And survive they would.

Fighting, screaming, punching, kicking, Natalya clutched tight to her, she forced her way to the periphery of the square. Were there more explosions? She didn’t know. This wasn’t Gori. There were no bodies on the ground. No blood. Just fear and dread. That was enough.

How long it took she’d no idea. Then the press of bodies around them eased. She found space to reach down and lift her daughter onto her chest, the way she did in Gori. A different child now. Natalya’s strong arms gripped her neck. Hanna struggled with her weight, battering their way through the diminishing crowd.

Behind them sirens shrieked. People screamed. There were announcements over the PA system Sinterklaas himself had been using. Messages pleading for people to stay calm. To avoid trampling others. To wait for help to arrive.

No one said that back in Georgia. For the simple reason that it never came.

One last push and they were through. Breathless, head hurting, arms aching from the weight of her daughter, she got them free of the hubbub, carried Natalya to the little lane then stumbled into a blind, dark alley next to a kebab shop. Put her on the ground, touched her fair hair, wondered what to say.