The Devil's Playground (25 page)

He looked at the photocopy, smudged and folded many

times in different directions, in and out of wallets and pockets,

scarred and tattered as Jake’s body had been.

‘Maybe you’re some kind of mathematical genius, maybe

you can see what it is.’

Jon looked at the string of numbers

827723167

‘A combination maybe?’

The detective sipped his coffee. ‘I wish it was that simple.

We’ve had the number run through some serious computers,

trying to find out any pattern or relationship to a conforming

set of numbers, but came up with nothing, or with so many

results and possibles that it means the same thing.’

‘I’m sorry I can’t be of any help.‘Jon pushed the scrap of

paper back across the table. He felt his chest tighten, felt

himself useless again. Crosby sang in the background about

how he almost cut his hair.

The detective handed the slip back. ‘You keep it, maybe

you’ll think of something. I’ve got so many copies of the

damn thing anyway. Don’t know if it’s of any relevance at all.’

Jon took the paper and folded it into his wallet, his new

wallet. He wanted to tell the detective about his pickpocketing

but it seemed so self-pitying.

‘I read about Beatrice’s father’s suicide this morning,’ he

said instead, thinking about Suze and what she’d told him

about Beatrice. Thinking how everything here comes back

to death.

‘Terrible. Things like that, shit.’ The detective rubbed his

forehead, speared a chunk of cheesecake and chewed on it

hard. ‘Somehow he’d got hold of photos of his daughter.

The press, no doubt. If you’d seen what had been done to

that girl, Jesus, Jon, much worse than anything you can

imagine, much worse than Jake, they all were. Christ, I just

wanted to rip the heart out of the motherfucker who did this

to her. I can’t believe they gave him those photos, no parent

should ever have to see that.’

‘I thought you experienced this kind of thing day in day

out,’ Jon replied, enjoying the detective’s outburst. He was

usually so laid-back.

‘We see a lot of homicides, a lot of people shot or strangled

or poisoned for money or for love or for lack of love or for

a million other reasons. I can understand that. I can take it

in as part of my normal routine, it makes sense to me on a

big scale, it can fit into the way I view the world. Then

something like this comes along, every victim more disfigured

than the last, as if he’s gearing up for something and

Jesus, you know he didn’t even rape her. He had her for

three days, did everything he could to her while she balanced

on the point of the cradle, burned most of her skin off, cut

holes and marks into her flesh — fuck … you know, this

girl, Beatrice De Roedel, she had so much going for her,

twenty-six years old, everything ahead and then some beast

comes and takes it all away … just because he can and

because that’s what he enjoys.’ Van Hijn was shaking. He’d

spilled coffee on the table and it was racing towards the edge

where it trickled down on to the floor. Jon could swear he

could hear every drop as it splashed the tiles below his feet.

‘You still think it’s the same people? The snuff makers?’

‘Yes,’ the detective looked pensive, ‘but maybe I’m wrong.’

He stared up at Jon, wondering how much he should tell

him, still unsure of the Englishman’s involvement. Did he

know about the Nazi films?

‘Why?’ The spilt coffee irritated Jon. He wanted to wipe it

off but couldn’t face reaching over the detective. Why didn’t

Van Hijn notice it?

‘Things have changed. I thought the girls had been butchered

for the sake of filming it. I still believe this. I think the

evidence refutes every other possibility. I thought your friend

was a victim of the same perpetrator. I still do, but things

are more complicated.’

‘How?’ Jon asked, feeling the pulse in his fists, oblivious

now to the coffee and the gauzy air around them.

Van Hijn shrugged. ‘There’s a collection of Nazi films up

for auction at the moment. You know anything about that?’

Jon looked at the detective, unsure what to say. ‘What

kind of films?’

‘From the camps - Auschwitz in particular, I think. You

could call them snuff films but that seems somewhat of an

understatement.’

‘And Jake, you think he was somehow tied into this?’

What would Jake have been doing with such films? How

would he have got hold of them? The museum? Jon’s mind

reeled.

‘There are two possibilities here. One, that these films are

indeed what they purport to be and that Jake discovered

them in the basement of the museum. Somehow others

found out that he possessed them and killed him for them.

This, I consider the less likely version. I don’t think those

films are real. I think they were made right here in Amsterdam,

this year. They needed Jake, used him in some form

and then disposed of him. I am sure that we will identify

Beatrice and the others once we can get hold of these reels.’

He arrived early at the Paradiso. Way too early. He sat,

nervously excited, like a teenager on a first date, drinking

scotch and trying to calm his nerves, alternating between

thinking how ridiculous it was to feel like this and following

the surge that shook his chest when he thought of Suze.

What Van Hijn had told him was still rattling around in

his head. Those numbers. The talk of films. It didn’t make

any sense and neither did the snuff disposal theory that the

detective was espousing. Jon was becoming more and more

sure that Jake’s murder hadn’t been random. Something had

made him go back to Amsterdam, a place that had held only

bad memories for the old man.

His thinking was distracted by the fact that Suze was late.

She’d said ten o’clock and it was already quarter past and he

was beginning to feel stressed, aching for a joint to calm his

nerves but not wanting to appear too stoned when she

arrived.

Three middle-aged men came on stage. They sat down and

picked up their instruments. Two of them had unspeakably

distasteful mullets, short and severe at the front and rolling

down to soft, trussed perms that spread evenly out across

their shoulders. They began to play what sounded like a very

bad translation of Irish folk music, guitar and bouzouki reels,

ham-fisted instrumentals, the three of them skipping in and

out of time with each other, then segued smoothly into a

medley of Toto and Boston covers.

‘Jon!’

He turned around and there she was, resplendent in a

maroon dress that stopped just above her knees. He felt his

heart skip a beat, his palms go clammy.

‘I’ve been looking all over for you,’ she said.

‘Been sitting here all the time.’

‘Shit, this isn’t the right hall, I forgot to tell you to go

upstairs. The concert’s up there.’

‘You mean we don’t get to see these guys perform?’ He

smiled, the tension now dissipating.

‘Unfortunately not. The Handsome Family are just starting

up, c’mon.’

They went out of the hall and up the stairs into a much

smaller, more intimate room, loosely filled with expectantly

whispering people. They stood next to each other, close but

not too close, every now and then brushing up against

shoulder or arm, then quietly retreating.

Jon pulled a ready-rolled out of his pocket and lit it, letting

the smoke sit deep in his lungs before exhaling. He hadn’t

wanted to get stoned before she got here but now he didn’t

care. He knew how much he needed it, how much he needed

to be here with her. He felt his whole body gripped by the

smoke, relaxing and expelling all the nervous tension that

had built up during the day.

The band came on and began to play their mournful

music, a deep, lonesome sound, rich with the American

vernacular, playing strange early-century instruments over

the faithful tap of a drum machine. Charley Patton and

Jimmie Rodgers slipped in and out of the programmed heart

of the beat merging decades in a single sad chord. The singer

sang of dead poodles and suicide attempts, incarcerations in a mental institute and boys stoning swans to death. A Rohypnol George Jones on a country death trip. His wife

played the autoharp, its weird angles and ancient resonance

not lost on the people watching, her beautiful, sad eyes

setting the whole scene on fire.

Jon looked at Suze as she stared at the band, enthralled.

He noticed the way her ears looked, the round dimpled

nuzzle of her flesh. He so much wanted to kiss her and felt

frustrated that he didn’t have the courage to just do it. Right

here and now.

And yet, as the music washed over him, he felt such a

tremendous surge of possibilities. The moment when it all

comes together in terrifying clarity, a feeling whose familiarity

had gradually slipped away from him over the years and he

was amazed to feel it here, in this small room, above and

enclosed from the pulsing city below.

That evening she took him back to her flat and they sat on

the sofa talking about stupid things, pointless things, full of

drink and dope, a radio channel emanating cocktail jazz in

the background. He didn’t make the moves, was too scared

or too stoned or something. She had to initiate it, edge

towards him, and then, all of a sudden, he grabbed her and

she saw the surprise in his eyes and then felt him move

himself against her, his lips, warm and moist, pressing against

hers and then everything went black, black and soft and

beautiful.

Afterwards they sat on her balcony and watched the sun

come up over east Amsterdam. The slow gathering of people

in the square, the setting up of cafe tables and shop awnings

spread to shelter from the rain, the restful motions of ordinary

life.

Suze watched him from the corner of her eye. He was

quiet, which was fine by her, she hated men who, after sex,

could do nothing but talk and talk, about the most mundane

things usually, thinking that sex somehow bonded them in a

way that allowed them to bore her with their lives. Jon just

sat and stared at the street, smoked cigarettes, and she

appreciated the way he seemed to know when silence was

more sexy than sound.

They spent the next few days in each other, floating

through the streets of Amsterdam, eventually ending up at

her flat every evening. Wild days full of disarray and promise,

first flushes and unexpected thrills. Days of talking and

talking and walking through the streets and yet more talking.

Days full of history and days where only the moment existed.

She took him around the city, showed him the houses

along Prinsengracht and explained what the gables and curlicues

signified. She told him the history of the city, its establishment at the place where Dam Square now stood, where

the Anabaptists were burned at the stake in 1576, its mercantile

foundations and autonomy from Church and rulers,

money the only governing factor, leading to tolerance, the

welcoming of Inquisition-fleeing Jews, the proto-capitalist

freedom of the free market, leading also to portraiture and

still life instead of the agonized Jesus that writhed and

squirmed on altarpieces from northern Germany to the

dwindled tip of Italy. Rembrandt and the Golden Age, the

decline into decadence and loss of empire, the dark days of

war, hunger and betrayal, the post-war Amsterdam squatters

and hippies, Provos chanting nonsensical Dada poetry, the

sharp crack of billy-clubs and free bicycles, civil rights and

the commercialization of criminality.

They sat in coffee shops and talked for hours over a single

cup. They went to movies that neither would have ever

thought they’d want to see, did stupid things - all these

moments that suddenly take on new meaning when shared,

like laughing at bad films together or at the way people

marched like cattle out of the trams and into the glass-fronted

office buildings that welcomed them like the doors to a

slaughterhouse. A whole new world revealed only in conspiratorial

closeness.

They talked about poets they both liked, finding each

other’s tastes so similar that it was uncanny; yes Lowell and

Cummings but Berryman and Eliot too and don’t forget

Jarrell’s crazy rhythms or the restless, unstoppable energy of

Pound.

‘I can’t believe it,’ he said when she mentioned how she

spent days reading biographies, sucking up the facts of these

poets’ lives as if it were the only nutrient that would sustain

her. ‘I used to love reading all that stuff too,’ he said.

She looked at him. ‘Yes. Berryman selling encyclopedias

door to door, Joyce passed out in the gutter, Eliot and his

breakdown, Pound in his Pisan cage. I love all that. I used

to read their biographies and it made me feel somehow

better.’

‘Better because their lives were so much worse than yours?’