The Wrong Girl (23 page)

‘Of course.’

The dry, mirthless laughter again.

‘I don’t think so. What I’m saying is . . . if this kid winds up dead it’s down to you.’

An electronic click and then the line went silent. Vos stared at the photo of Natalya Bublik, alone with a plastic container of food. Cowed but not scared. Her mother’s child. He could see that in her eyes.

Vos led Sam over to the Drie Vaten and said, ‘Sorry, boy. Not today.’

Sofia would walk him. Not the first time. Nor the last.

Eight hours and not a word about the shooting of Ismail Alamy.

It couldn’t be done. And he wondered if they knew that.

When he’d left the dog he called her. Hanna Bublik was wide awake already.

‘I need you in Marnixstraat,’ he said.

Lucas Kuyper took breakfast in the same place every morning: a smart cafe in the Nine Streets on the corner of Wolvenstraat and Herengracht. Good coffee and fresh orange juice. This morning
Wentelteefjes
, fried bread dipped in egg, sprinkled with sugar and cinnamon, served with home-made apricot jam.

A copy of
De Telegraaf
, not that he felt much like reading it. The European edition of the
Financial Times
was more to his taste. And a couple of pages of emails he’d printed out that morning, planning to deal with them at his usual quiet and solitary table in the corner.

The streets were getting ready for Christmas. Decorations strung from wall to wall across the narrow lanes. Posters in the windows. Images of Sinterklaas and his Black Petes beaming at shoppers and schoolchildren everywhere.

When he lived in France, working at a small and secretive NATO base, Kuyper had grown to love the French version of the dish before him.
Pain perdu
, lost bread, soaked in cognac before the slices went into the pan. On this cold morning, one full of bleak thoughts, he missed that added slug of spirit. The cafe knew him. Maybe they would have added in a shot of Dutch Vieux if he’d asked. But then his mouth would taste of spirit for the rest of the morning. And perhaps he’d meet someone . . .

He turned to the
FT.
The death of Alamy, an AIVD officer and a vengeful former military intelligence officer made three paragraphs on the front page. He felt outraged it was there at all. This was not why he read the paper.

There was only one other customer in the place, a middle-aged woman wrapped up as if the weather was about to turn arctic. She sat in the window. He watched her carefully. Professionally. She grabbed some kind of tablet out of her bag and started to play a game.

Bored. Like him. He pulled out the sheets he’d printed that morning and began to go through them. Then he heard a familiar voice at the door and quickly stuffed the pages in his pocket.

Renata Kuyper ordered a coffee and sat down.

‘I thought I’d find you here.’

‘It’s where I eat breakfast,’ he said. ‘Where else?’

‘I phoned you. Left messages. You never called back.’

A small TV was droning away up on the wall in the corner. The news was on. There seemed to be nothing to talk about in Amsterdam but the shooting of Ismail Alamy in the presence of a woman whose daughter had been kidnapped in order to secure his release. Not that they had an interview with Hanna Bublik, barely even a photograph. She’d refused to speak to the media.

‘I watched the early morning news,’ he said. ‘You were there. At Schiphol.’ A brief scowl and then he folded away the pink paper. ‘I thought I must have been dreaming.’

‘Of course I was there. This is our fault. Henk gave her the jacket he bought for Saskia. If it wasn’t for us . . .’

He reached forward and took her hand. She fell silent.

‘You and Henk are responsible for nothing. The men who kidnapped that child bear the blame. Just as this deranged soldier must for what happened at the airport.’ Another scowl. ‘Though at least he’s paid for it.’

The coffee came. She waited for the waitress to leave and said, ‘You know, don’t you? About Henk? About what he did?’

Kuyper liked this woman but appreciated the burden his son sometimes had to carry.

‘He phoned me last night. He was worried. He didn’t know where you’d gone. Then he saw the pictures from Schiphol.’ He picked at the sweet, spicy toast. His appetite had vanished. ‘You didn’t even phone him. What do you expect?’

‘I don’t expect my husband to go screwing street women behind my back.’

He looked at his food and kept quiet.

Her head went to one side. She seemed permanently tense and angry these days. But at times the strained anxiety left her and he could see a shadow of the young woman his son had married. Though even then there’d been difficulties. It was an odd match. A rash one, based on passion rather than logic.

‘Is that unreasonable of me, Lucas?’

‘Marriages are always tested one way or another. Life’s not a bed of roses. Only children believe that.’

‘Do you think Natalya Bublik’s life’s a bed of roses now? Or her mother’s?’

Her voice had risen. The waitress behind the counter was starting to look worried.

‘That’s the girl’s name?’

‘Don’t you read the papers?’

‘Not for that kind of news. There’s enough of it in the world already. It doesn’t need me to make it real.’

He drained his coffee and said, ‘When I had to face all that nonsense over Kosovo Ruth left me. Henk never told you, I imagine.’

The look of surprise on her face said everything.

‘My husband doesn’t tell me much, does he?’

‘Perhaps he thinks that’s for the best.’

‘I thought you and Ruth were the happiest couple in the world. Until she fell ill.’

He frowned.

‘Some of the time we were. Not when the press were at the front door wanting to know whether I was some kind of mass murderer. Or a coward. Or . . . God knows what. She left me. When I needed her most.’

He wanted her to know the memory was still distasteful and that this was a conversation he resented.

‘I’m sorry, Lucas.’

‘Well there you are. Had she not fallen sick she’d never have come back.’ He leaned forward to emphasize the point. ‘Nor would I have accepted her. That’s how bad matters had become. But when she returned . . .’ He picked at a piece of the sugary bread in any case and placed a piece in his mouth. ‘After a while we realized that happiness doesn’t arrive of its own accord. Sometimes you have to build it. On occasion from nothing. Or ruins. And one happy day in a year of misery is sometimes the best you can hope for.’

‘I didn’t come here for a lecture.’

‘Why then?’

‘Hanna Bublik’s going to need money.’

He shook his head.

‘You think paying criminals solves problems? What about the next child who’s kidnapped by these scum? Would that lie on your conscience? It should. You don’t put out a fire by throwing petrol on it.’

She hesitated at that. An intelligent woman. Kuyper was sure she understood the dilemma.

‘That’s an intellectual argument. Mine’s an emotional one. I’ve met her. She doesn’t deserve this any more than her daughter does.’

He sighed and before he could speak she broke in, ‘If it was Saskia they’d snatched would you feel the same way? Would you let her die for these . . . principles? Can you call them that?’

A grunt of impatience.

‘Of course I’d feel differently. But it’s not Saskia, is it? There’s nothing wrong with speaking from your heart. Sometimes you have to listen to the head too.’

‘So the life of the child of an East European whore is worth less than that of your granddaughter?’

‘I’m not a wealthy man. Whatever people say. The army never paid well. The family name’s just that. A name.’

There was the briefest of smiles. She was thin, still pretty and there was a strength inside this fragile facade. He’d seen that from the outset.

‘I’m leaving Henk,’ she said. ‘We need somewhere to live. Saskia and me. I don’t have anyone else to turn to. You’ve all that room.’

He shook his head.

‘You want me to help you abandon my son?’

‘Lucas! I can’t stay in that house with him! Not after this.’

‘Henk loves you. He loves Saskia. I won’t be a party to breaking up my own family.’

‘If he loves me why does he go and have sex with prostitutes behind a curtain in the street?’

He waved her away.

‘Enough. Forgiveness takes time. It’s important to work on it. You know my opinion.’

He got up and paid the bill for both of them. She followed him to the door and grabbed his arm.

‘Lucas . . .’

‘If I may drag you away from your battered pride for a moment and ask a question,’ he cut in sourly. ‘Can’t you see Henk needs you? Now more than ever? Or do you believe you’re the only one in the world capable of feeling a little pain?’

‘A little pain?’ she echoed, then swore at him and that was a first. ‘Do I get some money from you or not?’

‘In return for what?’ he demanded. ‘Nothing comes for free.’

She squinted at him in disbelief.

‘What do you want?’

‘I want you to give Henk a second chance. If I pay up for this insane pipe dream will you do that for me?’

She stared at him.

‘Is that meant to include sleeping with him too? Because if it does . . .’

‘You’re man and wife! That comes with duties and responsibilities. To one another. To Saskia.’

‘Jesus . . . I don’t believe . . .’

‘If I match your money will you at least give him the opportunity to put things right? And get off his back for a while?’

‘Do I have a choice?’

‘You can say no. Lose your marriage. Your daughter. Your home. This madcap scheme to help some prostitute you don’t even know . . . There’s your choice.’

She thought for a moment.

‘Very well. I’ll do it. I think we can raise thirty thousand on our own. I expect you can double that, can’t you?’

‘Tell me when you need it.’

Kuyper watched her stamp off down the street in her expensive winter coat.

Who paid for that?
he wondered.
Did she ever even ask herself?

When she was gone he strode to the edge of the canal and found a quiet spot. Called, got through on the second ring.

‘What the hell are we going to do about this bloody mess?’ he demanded. And waited for an answer.

Ferdi Pijpers’s home was a spotless, bare studio in the basement of a run-down block in one of Oud-West’s less salubrious streets. Social housing for the impoverished. The place had a single bed, a table, two chairs, a few pots, pans and plates, not much else.

The night team had been scouring the room. Two forensic officers were still tramping around in bunny suits. Van der Berg was with them looking faintly ridiculous inside the white plastic.

One of the forensics glanced at Bakker when she turned up and said she didn’t need to join them in the protective clothing.

‘We’re just about done here,’ the woman added. ‘Not a lot to see.’

They’d found one more weapon, an old handgun, and some ammunition. Probably stolen from the army.

Van der Berg climbed out of his suit and asked if she wanted to go and get four coffees from the place round the corner.

‘Not really,’ she said.

He looked her up and down.

‘I’ll get them then,’ Van der Berg replied and walked out of the room.

The two scene of crime officers shuffled on their plasticized feet. Bakker asked what they’d found. Not much. The neighbours barely knew Pijpers who’d been placed in the flat by a military charity. From the contents of the kitchen it appeared he lived off ham, eggs and beer.

She pulled on a pair of disposable gloves, went to the sideboard by the bed and opened the top drawer.

‘We’ve done that already,’ the woman officer said.

‘Good,’ Bakker noted and rifled through the old clothes, underpants, socks, sweatshirts, found nothing.

The next drawer down had much of the same. And the third.

‘The most interesting thing we’ve got is this,’ the woman added.

She went to a police storage box and pulled out a small photo in a frame, now enclosed in a plastic evidence bag. Bakker took it out and found herself staring at a picture of a young boy in scruffy clothes, perhaps seven or eight. He had olive skin and a gap-toothed smile. Behind him was desert with a big khaki military vehicle manoeuvring in the half-distance, throwing up dust.

Van der Berg came back with the coffee and placed four cardboard cups on the table. She didn’t touch hers.

‘Afghanistan,’ he said. ‘Rijnder got the story out of the army overnight. The boy was an orphan that the camp kind of adopted. He lived with them. Used to run errands. They were teaching him Dutch and English.’

He swigged at his coffee.

‘Pijpers looked after the kid apparently. He wanted to get permission to bring him here. He said it wasn’t safe to leave him behind. Not after he’d lived in the camp and learned the language. The bosses said no.’

She knew what was coming.

‘And?’

‘One afternoon he wandered out of the compound and never came back. They found him a couple of kilometres away two days later. You don’t want the details.’ More coffee. It looked as if he needed it. ‘Ferdi Pijpers went crazy. Accused the commanding officer of abandoning the lad. Next thing he’s out of the army and back here trying to live on a pathetic pension.’

Van der Berg took the photo and put it back in the evidence bag. He didn’t bother to pull on gloves. Perhaps there was no point. It was obvious what had happened here. A sick ex-soldier had come back full of hate. Seen what was happening with Alamy. Decided to take it out on the preacher. And perhaps Holland too.

‘The fool didn’t do that Georgian kid any favours,’ the forensic woman grumbled.

‘Ferdi Pijpers was crazy,’ Van der Berg remarked. ‘Don’t look at someone like that for logic. And we made him that way’ He stabbed his chest with a forefinger. ‘Us.’

Silence then. A little embarrassed by his outburst Van der Berg asked if there was any news from Marnixstraat.

‘Not that I know,’ Bakker replied. ‘But then I only know what I’m told. Which isn’t much.’

‘Laura . . . we could all just buy badges, print “I apologize” on the front and stick them on our chests if you like. Would that help?’