Zero Hour (35 page)

I jiggled the bolts up and down and tried to pull them back at the same time. The more I struggled, the less purchase I had with my sweat-covered fingers. I pulled my sleeve as far down as I could, and used it as a glove.

The front door caved in. Shouts surged up the stairs.

The bolts shifted and I pushed open the hatch into the night sky. Cold air hit me as I climbed out. I pulled Lily up behind me before dropping it back.

Keeping low on the roof, we scrambled towards the rear of the building. Blue flashing lights were piling in front and back. Headlamps bounced across the wasteground. The air was full of radio squawks and shouts.

‘Just stay with me, OK?’ I gave her arm an encouraging squeeze. I didn’t want her to flap any more than she already was and fuck up.

We aimed for the three-metre wall that would take us across the top of the next-door office block. There’d be no second attempt.

My throat was parched and I couldn’t get enough oxygen. Adrenalin took over. I sprang up and my hands gripped the edge of the parapet. My legs scrabbled against the brickwork. I repeated the elbow trick. I heaved and kicked until my stomach reached tar and gravel. I clawed my way a couple of feet further, then swivelled round and stretched my hands over the edge.

‘Come on.’

She jumped and I grabbed her hands. She slipped from my grasp.

‘Again!’

This time I gripped her with my right hand and flailed around with my left, hoping for something to grab. I got a fistful of sweatshirt and heaved her up onto the lip. She swung her legs sideways and came the rest of the way.

More shouts drifted up from the street. More loudspeakers barked either side of the building. Blue lights sped down from Distelweg.

I didn’t bother checking the entrance to the central stairwell. Even if we could get in, we couldn’t stay there. We had to make distance. We needed one big straight line out of the immediate danger area.

We ran past it to the far edge of the roof. FilmNoord XXX shone like a beacon. I knew Lily was behind me; she coughed and I felt her breath on my sweat-soaked neck. I edged along the parapet until I was directly above the galvanized-steel platform I’d seen the last time I was up there, slid my legs over and dropped. I landed with a clang like a bass gong, but noise wasn’t a problem. They were making enough of their own.

Her feet dangled above my head. I cupped my hands beneath them to give her some support.

More sirens and blue lights swept down Papaverhoek and screamed to a halt. They were throwing up a road-block. Why else would they stop so close to the main?

We hit the ground and headed right. I wanted us to be able to lose ourselves among the maze of brick walls and wooden fences that surrounded those back gardens. We found a muddy track that ran between them and crossed a strip of rough land. Brick walls reared up in front of us, but there was always a way round. I didn’t have a clue what lay the other side of them. I just wanted to get within reach of the roundabout and then the estate.

I caught a glimpse of the main at the far end of a narrow alleyway. I moved swiftly along it and glanced left. I couldn’t see the police cars but I knew where the road-block was. Blue lights strobed all around the incident area, bouncing off the low cloud, but up here it was as dark as any other night.

‘We slow down now, Lily.’

Her shoulders were heaving, her eyes wide. She leant forward and rested her elbows on her thighs.

‘Deep breaths - come on now, calm down, sort yourself out.’

I wanted her looking as normal as possible. I put my hand on her shoulder. ‘You OK? We’ve got to go.’

She was still gulping air, but she nodded. I hooked out my arm for her to take. ‘Girlfriend and boyfriend?’

She raised the skin where there had once been an eyebrow.

‘OK, daughter and dad …’

That earned me my first smile. It gave me a bit of a lump in my throat. I pictured another little girl who’d trusted me and died. I was fucked if I was going to let it happen this time around.

We stepped out and followed the pedestrian crossing to the right of the market into the warren of streets behind the parade of shops. We hadn’t gone more than a hundred metres when I had to pull her into a doorway as yet another blue-and-white zoomed towards the incident.

And in that moment, from about a K and a half behind us, came a loud, dull bang. A jet of flame shot into the sky like the gas flare above an oilrig. It only burnt briefly. After that, the raging inferno would be contained by the silo walls.

25

I looked at the glow in the sky above Noord 5.

Lily tugged at my arm. ‘What is it?’

‘I don’t know. Let’s keep going.’

The less she knew about everything the better. But Lily stayed still, watching the flames, then turned back to me. I knew she wanted an explanation. She wasn’t getting one. That job was done. I was already thinking about my next one.

We passed the Islamic centre. Checking left at the junction, I could see the girls standing in a huddle with two police cars holding them together. They, too, were staring towards the site of the explosion. The police must have been all over them as quickly as they had been with me. They were the victims; it didn’t matter. The reason the police had come calling at the safe-house also didn’t matter right now. Thinking about it didn’t achieve anything. The only thing that did was making distance from them.

In the meantime, I’d put that whole side of things on the back burner. It was getting more crowded by the moment.

We walked for another thirty minutes. We crossed wider waterways and parks, and under elevated dual carriageways. Our surroundings became increasingly residential. Trendy apartment blocks sprang up, with cycle lanes and neatly parked cars. We were back in civilization but there was no way I was taking trams, buses or taxis. Municipal transport had CCTV. Taxi drivers might remember something. The police operation that had almost netted us was not going to shut up shop for weeks.

A shiny green phone booth materialized in front of us. At last I could make the call.

Anna answered immediately. I could hear the tension in her voice. ‘When will you be here? I—’

‘Stop, stop! I need you to come and pick us up. Can you do that? There’s been a drama. Can you get a car?’

‘Yes.’

‘Get a car with sat nav, and meet me.’

‘Do you still have her?’

‘No, it was a fuck-up. But I have Lily. You got a pen?’

I waited a few seconds as the information sank in but she stayed completely switched on. She knew now wasn’t the time to go wobbly.

‘Go.’

‘I’m at the junction, and I’ll spell it, of H-e-t new word D-ok and K-o-p-e-r-s-l-a-g-e-r-i-j. The street names have one zero two one on them - that must be the area code. It’s on the north side of the bay. You got that? It’s full of smart flats, grassy open spaces and a smart green telephone box.’

‘Got it.’

I listened as she read everything back. I checked the road sign again, making sure the spelling was correct. ‘Quick as you can, Anna, without speeding.’

‘Is she OK?’

‘She’s fine. The other girls are safe. But you need to call off Lena’s friends. No need to meet up. Angeles won’t be needing them.’

The silence hung between us as she realized what I’d just said.

‘OK, sure. I’ll call.’ I could hear her moving now, the door to her room closing behind her and her voice beginning to echo in the hotel hallway.

‘It’s probably going to take you about thirty minutes this time of night. I’ll call you to check how you’re doing. OK?’

‘See you soon.’

‘Anna …’

‘Yes?’

I hesitated. ‘I can’t wait to see you.’

She thought about it for a second. ‘So get off the phone.’

26

For almost the whole hour and a half that we waited under the dual carriageway sirens wailed along the tarmac above us. The park was deserted.

I’d called Anna from a phone box when I said I would. She was on her way.

We sat shivering against a tree and I had to hold Lily in my arms to keep her warm. Her head was on my chest.

‘Lily, what happened? Why did you leave home?’

She didn’t move. Maybe she felt safe where she was.

‘I had to get away.’

‘Had to?’

She shrugged. ‘It seems so stupid after what has happened. My father betrayed me. And he betrayed the protest movement.’

‘After the election?’

Her head moved on my chest. ‘You have to realize how wonderful it was for us to finally know democracy. For one day, for one bright shining day, it seemed as though the power was in the people’s hands. We, the students, were going to be part of the solution. Not part of the problem, like my father.’

‘He liked it just the way it was?’

I felt her head nod slowly.

‘The Communists rigged the election. They bought everyone off - using money from people like my father. He just thinks of himself and his business. I wanted to leave - I wanted to hurt him just as he hurt me.’

‘Why Christiania?’

‘I read about it for a sociology class last year. Communal life. Utopia. It sounded like a good place to escape to.’

She dug into her jeans and brought out the Facebook picture. She opened it up as if I’d never seen it before. ‘But he changed that.’

‘Was he your boyfriend?’

‘Sort of.’ She paused. ‘He wanted sex but I wanted to wait until I married.’

Her hand dropped and let go of the paper. I had to grab it before it blew away.

‘He said he knew someone in Copenhagen, a friend of his father’s. He said he would talk to him and he would help me there.’

I folded the picture and shoved it into my jeans.

‘Viku
sold
me … How could I have been so stupid?’ She craned her neck to get eye-to-eye. ‘I met the old man. He was kind to me. He bought me something to eat and we talked of how wonderful Christiania was and how happy I was going to be there. But then he took me to a house where he said I could stay.’

She didn’t cry, just stared down at the ground, trying to close her mind to what had happened next.

‘It’s OK, Lily, I know the rest. But you are safe now.’

She replaced her head on my chest. I felt her jaw clench. Safety was something that belonged to another life.

‘My father, did he send you?’

‘Your dad knows nothing about it. One of his friends did.’

She scoffed. ‘One of his murderer friends?’

‘What makes you say that?’

‘He and all the others who make weapons, they are killers.’

‘I thought your father was in electronics?’

It was worth confirming what I thought I had worked out.

‘I don’t just mean missiles and tanks. Computers and radar are weapons too, any equipment that helps to kill and maim.’ She sat up. She was getting quite animated. ‘A military computer is as lethal as a bomb. Making military computers is a trade in misery.’

‘The people your father sell his computers to - isn’t he just meeting a demand?’

Her eyes blazed. ‘A
pimp
meets a demand. A
drug-dealer
meets a demand. What is the difference between trafficking heroin or women and exporting weapons, except that weapons are more dangerous? They’re all merchants of death. My eyes were opened to these things at university. I do not want to profit from his trade any more. That is why I left. Look where it got me.’

I thought she was going to cry.

‘Please do not tell him what has happened to me.’

I gave her a hug. ‘He’ll get nothing from me.’

‘Thank you. What is your name?’

‘Nick.’

‘Thank you, Nick.’

We lapsed into silence. Lily was either asleep or almost there. Her breathing was slow and stable.

Another couple of sirens buzzed along the dual carriageway at warp speed. I consulted Mr G-Shock. ‘We’ve got to go.’ I stroked the top of her head.

She stirred. ‘She is here?’

‘Should be by now.’

We walked back out across the park, the traffic still zooming backwards and forwards overhead but now behind us. What I was looking for was a silver Opel estate. The start of the reg was 62-LH.

I spotted it parked just past the junction, and then the silhouette of Anna’s head. There was no time for casual contact drills. I wanted to get in the car and go.

As we got nearer, I heard the clunk of the central locking. I opened the back door for Lily and I got into the front. Anna backed out and moved off without saying a word. The sat nav gave her a string of English instructions. I caught a hint of Bulgari that made me feel a whole lot better.

Anna checked her rear-view. She didn’t want to talk yet. She wanted to get out of the area. I looked at her face and gave her a smile. It wasn’t returned. She wasn’t impressed with life right now.

It was only when we hit the dual carriageway that Anna broke the silence. ‘Lily … Can I call you Lily?’ She didn’t wait for a response. ‘My name is Anna.’ She gobbed off in Russian.

Lily gasped, and then almost choked with emotion. Her hands whirred like she was signing for the deaf. She leant in towards the front seat, her lips on overload. The only word I could understand was ‘Angeles’.

‘Stop, Lily. Stop.’ I turned to Anna. ‘All she knows is that Angeles is dead. I’ll tell you everything as soon as we get to the hotel. But not now, yeah?’

27

We parked in a multi-storey at Schiphol. Lily had crashed out on the back seat. I felt like doing the same. The heater had been working overtime.

Anna showed me her Radisson door card. The room number was scrawled on its folder. ‘Fifth floor.’

‘Which way are the lifts when you walk into Reception - left, right, straight?’

‘Turn right as soon as you go in, past the reception desk.’

‘I’ll give you and Lily fifteen minutes, yeah?’

Lily yawned, stretched and sat up. She must have sensed that we were no longer moving.

I looked over my shoulder. ‘We can’t all go in together. Anna and you go first. I’ll come after.’

Her hand was already on the passenger-door handle.

‘Lily, it’s OK.’ I reached over and gripped the leg of her jeans. ‘You stay with me. We’ll go together.’