reading

1

Inspector Jaap Rykel breathes in.

‘How can you have lost him?’ he says, watching a coot scan for food in the canal below. The bird’s beak flashes white as it dives, leaving ever-expanding circles on the water’s surface.

‘Nah, we’ve got him again,’ says the voice on the phone. ‘Just a temporary blip at changeover.’

Jaap waits for the bird to reappear, marvelling at how long it can stay under, how long it can hold its breath. He turns and crosses the road, narrowly missing a determined woman on a bike. A small bug-eyed dog glares at him from the handlebar basket as it sails past.

‘How temporary?’

‘Couple of hours, but like I said, we’re on him now. No harm done.’

He hopes that’s true. Because the man under surveillance drugged and then murdered two people, and it’s taken him three stress-fuelled months of painstaking, and often frustrating, work to get to this stage.

He does not want a fuck-up.

‘Right, stay on him, and from now on keep me updated on every move,’ he says before pocketing his phone, wondering how a surveillance team, whose one job is to keep tabs on someone, messes up like that.

He reaches the station and punches in his code, waiting for the click telling him he can enter. He’s anticipating the usual cool blast of air against his face, but as he steps through the door he finds it’s even hotter inside than out.

‘Bit cold,’ he says as he walks past the desk sergeant, ‘maybe we could turn the heating up?’

‘AC crapped out about an hour ago,’ the desk sergeant says, wiping away tiny beads of sweat dappling his face. ‘Someone’s on their way to fix it. Believe it when I see it, though.’

Jaap takes two flights up, heat increasing with each step. The office itself, open plan and usually glacial, is no better. He walks over to his desk, nestled amongst several others at the far end of the oblong space, and avoids catching anyone’s eye, his mind on what’s to come.

Three months he’s been working this case, and late yesterday evening he’d finally, after laying it all out to Station Chief Henk Smit and getting the official OK, put in the warrant request. In the normal scheme of things, and given the severity of the two crimes involved, he’d get a quick response.

But here he is, the next afternoon, and still nothing.

He checks his phone again, just in case, and then his email. Aside from an Exciting Investment Opportunity and a warning that his Paypal account will be suspended unless he clicks this link right now, there’s nothing. No warrant. And no communication explaining why that might be.

Smit’s busy when he tries to reach him on the phone, his PA telling him he’s in a meeting for at least another hour, so he decides to go back over what he’d submitted, checking he hadn’t made some mistake which could be holding everything up.

On 3 May he’d taken a call leading to the first victim, Dafne Koster, a twenty-seven-year-old classroom assistant from Alkmaar. She’d been found in a field, hands tied behind her back, her head wrapped tight in cling film. Even though she’d tried to rub her face against the ground, the many layers of plastic had held tight. Worse, from footprints round the body it looked like someone had stood and watched as she writhed, her desperate attempts to get air into her lungs, trying to cling onto a life rapidly receding.

The investigation had been tough, all the usual avenues pulling blanks, and Jaap was starting to fear it was destined to be every inspector’s nightmare, an unsolvable case.

But that was before the second body turned up a month and a half later. Nadine Adelaars, twenty-two, a trainee printmaker from Zwolle. Her body was found on a stretch of land just south of the city, hands tied behind her back, duct tape wrapped round her nose and mouth. In and of itself that wasn’t enough to definitively link the two crimes, but a surprising detail emerged which went a long way to proving the killer of both women was the same.

Jaap leans back in his chair, his body full of that pre-arrest anxiety which he always gets, a density in his stomach which will only grow and grow until it’s over.

His phone rings – months ago on a long stake-out he’d set it as the Mission Impossible theme, a kind of meta-joke which no one seems to get – and his hand shoots out, knocking it off the table in his haste.

‘Yeah?’ he says once he’s retrieved it from the floor.

‘Just heard, warrant’s going to be issued,’ Henk Smit says. ‘Might as well head over there so we can move the second it does.’

As he puts the phone down Jaap wonders about the we not you, a small puzzle which is solved as he’s signing out an unmarked from the underground car pool and sees the door swing open to reveal his boss.

Turns out Smit’s junked his meeting and is coming along for the ride, the scent of a high-profile arrest too tantalizing to pass up.

Great, Jaap thinks. Just great.

The house, midway down a tree-lined street, is innocent.

It’s no different from any of the others – nothing, as far as Jaap can see, hinting that the four suburban walls house a man who in the recent past murdered two young women, stood over them as their lungs fought for air which wasn’t to come.

His leg’s got that going-to-sleep tingle, and he shifts, trying to stretch it out as much as the footwell allows. Beside him Smit digs at something under his thumb nail. If it was anyone other than Smit, Jaap might think they were nervous.

Unseen, a bunch of sparrows irritate the world with their incessant chirping. A kid freewheels loosely past on a bike way too small for him, white earbuds snaking down his cheeks, his oversize cap on sideways.

‘I thought you said it was due any minute?’ Jaap says, following the kid till he turns off the road at the far end, disappearing behind a parked SUV with blacked-out windows and a bad scuff on the passenger door.

Smit shrugs. Because he doesn’t have to answer to someone he manages.

Leaves flicker shadows onto the pavement. Jaap watches them, suddenly convinced there’s a message to their flighty movement, if only he can decipher what it is.

Then he wonders why he always assumes there’s a mystery to solve, why he can’t just let it be.

‘Something funny?’ Smit asks.

Jaap’s turn to shrug.

He settles his eyes on the photo of the suspect, pinned squint to the dashboard between them. Francesco Kamp is mid-thirties, his name and curly black hair courtesy of his second-generation Italian mother, height from his Dutch father.

Where he gets the propensity to kill young women is anyone’s guess.

Kamp, a train driver for the NS, had a wife who died in childbirth just eight months ago, leaving him as the sole carer of their baby girl. It was through one of the social workers assigned to him that Jaap had got a feel for just how angry Kamp was. Jaap’s not a psychologist, but he knows first-hand how grief can unleash things you never knew you had inside. He’d been through the grieving process himself, his daughter Floortje dying two years ago, and if it wasn’t for Tanya helping him through it, then he doesn’t know what he might have done.

And now he and Tanya are expecting their first child together.

Sometimes he marvels at how fast things have happened between them, at how he’s now standing on the cusp of the rest of his life. There are days it makes him giddy. Others when the enormity of it almost makes him sick.

His leg’s tingling less now, and he tenses the muscles for a few seconds before releasing them. It helps, so he does it again. And again.

Their phones are stubbornly silent, and the sun’s bullying them from the sky. It’s starting to make Jaap feel smothered, suffocated. His finger finds the button, a little indent showing him which end means down, and he presses it, hoping for a breeze on his face, the cleanliness of it, a new beginning.

But the air outside is humid and still, a solid, inescapable presence. Even the leaves have given up and are now hanging limp, as if exhausted from their wasted attempt to communicate.

Smit’s phone buzzes. He takes it up to his ear, a puppet who’s just had a string jerked.

‘Talk to me,’ he says like this is his case, like he’s been the one working hours so long the days blurred into each other and he started waking at two in the morning terrified he couldn’t breathe.

Jaap tunes out. He should feel resentful of Smit’s intrusion, but really, what’s the point? The police force is at heart no different to any other organization. As in, you take the shit, your superior takes the glory. That’s just how it is, how it always will be, for ever and ever. Amen.

‘Halle-fucking-lujah,’ Smit finally says, hanging up.

Jaap takes a breath, expands his lungs and holds the air there, forcing calm, the pressure something to push against, anchor to, a moment of stability in an unstable world.

‘Let’s do it,’ he says, breathing out.

It’s way too hot for stab vests, but they pull them out of the boot anyway and Velcro them on. Smit inspects his gun, pops the clip and Jaap hears the double click as the slide’s pumped. Satisfied, Smit slams it back together with the heel of his hand. He checks the sight, like there’s anything he can do about it if it’s not right, then ends his virtuoso performance with a nod and a quick purse of his lips.

‘Been a while since you fired one of those?’ Jaap asks, hoping Smit gets the implication, you desk-bound bureaucrat.

Smit eyeballs him, is just opening his mouth to say something, when he’s interrupted by the whine of an engine pushed to the limit. Jaap’s head’s on a swivel, he sees a van from one of the major news networks sliding into the street so fast it’s close to two-wheeling. They watch as it straightens up, just misses a side-on with a parked car, and stops fast, front end dipping hard as the brakes bite.

‘You’re kidding. How did they know?’ Jaap asks.

Smit shrugs, rubs a small area on the gun barrel with his finger, as if there’s some dirt there which needs removing.

The engine cuts out.

Sparrows chirp.

Jaap suddenly sees the answer to his own question. He’s known Smit for over five years, so really he shouldn’t be surprised.

He hears the rumble and hollow reverberating slam of a sliding door and glances over towards the TV crew. They’re setting up, a woman reporter and a bearded guy hefting a camera on his shoulder, looking for all the world like a dirty jihadist readying a bazooka.

As the man turns Jaap feels like he’s in the firing line. He imagines cross-hairs on his chest.

From a parked car one of the surveillance crew gets out, starts ushering them back.

‘Bad idea,’ Jaap says, nodding towards the reporters, the woman arguing with the surveillance guy.

He knows it’s not going to achieve anything, but he can’t help himself, can’t help needling his boss. Sometimes it’s the only way to get through the day.

But Smit, if anything, appears relaxed.

Relaxed as in, doesn’t give a shit.

‘It’s called media relations,’ he says. ‘Maybe you didn’t notice but they’ve been all over this case. Now we need to show them the resolution. And it’s better if we’re in control of them.’

Jaap checks his own weapon again, doesn’t say anything.

‘Yeah, I know you don’t give a fuck,’ Smit says, seeming to take offence at Jaap’s silence. ‘But that’s why I’m station chief and you’re not. From where I’m sitting I see a bigger picture.’

‘That management course you went on, how’d that work out?’

Now it’s Smit’s turn to be silent.

Jaap makes one more last-minute check on his gear, decides now is the time.

‘Stay in front of me where it’s safe,’ Jaap says as just across the street a woman steps out of the house next door to Kamp’s. She’s medium height, long brown hair tied in a high ponytail which bounces as she neatly hops over the low wooden fence and presses the doorbell. She has an apron on, dusted with flour.

‘Fuck’s she doing?’ Smit asks.

Jaap’s debating ducking back to the car or running forward, but before he can react the door opens, their target standing there in the newly opened gap. He’s obviously in the middle of some DIY, a screwdriver held in one hand.

He looks at the woman, then quickly, almost involuntarily, his eyes search the street.

Jaap and Smit don’t have time to get out of sight. Kamp sees them, and acts. He leaps forward, the door swinging closed behind him, and grabs the woman, spins her round so Jaap can see the shock and confusion on her face.

Then, as she feels the tip of a screwdriver touch her neck, it turns to fear.

Somewhere down the street a mower rips into life, a once familiar sound taking on a menacing cast.

Menacing because Jaap doesn’t want anything to tip the balance of Kamp’s mind, anything which could destroy the delicate equilibrium of the moment, spur him into making the wrong choice.

‘Take it easy,’ Jaap calls across to Kamp. ‘We can work it out.’

Out of the corner of his eye Jaap sees Smit, weapon out, edge one step closer. It’s been less than thirty seconds since Kamp grabbed the woman, thirty seconds in which he and Smit have got into position, backed up by the surveillance crew.

Kamp’s breathing hard, he seems more panicked than the woman he’s holding, the hand with the screwdriver trembling.

And Jaap knows that in situations like this, panic is a killer.

‘Just breathe,’ he says. ‘Breathe and it’ll be OK.’

Smit takes another step, thinking he’s out of Kamp’s field of vision. But somehow Kamp senses the movement and zeroes his eyes in on him.

Jaap thinks of the game they used to play as kids, the aim was to sneak up on someone and freeze in place when they turned. If they saw you moving, you were out.

‘Put it down,’ Jaap says, staying put for now. ‘Put it down, and we can talk.’

Kamp’s not stupid. He knows the score, knows he’s not getting out of this. Knows that the word talk is code for arrest-and-prosecute-to-the-full-extent-of-the-law-you-dirty-piece-of-murdering-shit.

Movement in the corner of Jaap’s eye. He risks a quick sideways glance, and sure enough they’re filming, edging closer to the action, the man supposed to be keeping them back focused on Kamp, his own weapon drawn.

In journalistic terms this is like winning multiple lotteries all at once. In police terms, it’s the exact opposite.

‘Go away,’ Kamp yells, the first time he’s said anything, his voice tight, ratcheting in his throat. ‘Go away or I’ll do it.’

He pushes the screwdriver harder, Jaap can see the dent it’s making in the creamy skin of the woman’s neck.

A drop of blood swells up as the tip punctures.

He tries to catch her eye, tell her with just a look that it’s going to be all right. She squints slightly, either telling him she’s understood, or in reaction to the pain, Jaap can’t tell.

He doesn’t want to take the shot, but his options are rapidly depleting. He’s close enough, Kamp’s head appearing over the woman’s shoulder, face unreadable.

His finger, flat against the body of his Glock, curls down to the trigger, testing the resistance gently.

So much can happen in a simple millimetre.

‘This is your last warning,’ Jaap says. ‘Put it down.’

Kamp’s agitated, his eyes jerking around, a cornered animal searching for escape.

Jaap takes a step closer, just to let him know escape’s not an option.

Kamp holds out for a few seconds more, then starts to lower the screwdriver. He releases his fingers, the tool clattering against the doorstep tiles. He shoves the woman hard, she stumbles and it takes her a second to realize that she’s actually free, that it’s not a trick. Then she rushes forward, into the arms of one of the surveillance team, who whisks her quickly away.

‘On your knees, hands on your head,’ Jaap yells as he starts moving forward. He steps up the path, past flowers and a fibreglass water feature desperately imitating rock, and reaches Kamp, waiting on his knees. Stepping behind him, Jaap goes for his cuffs, finds they’re not on his belt.

Fuck.

Smit whistles; when Jaap looks up he tosses over a pair. Jaap catches them one-handed and cuffs one wrist then the other. He hauls Kamp up. There’s a kind of damp heat coming off him, his whole body vibrating.

As they move down the path a baby starts crying from the house behind them. One of the surveillance crew heads towards the door.

Smit, now the danger’s passed, steps up and bear-mauls Jaap’s shoulder.

‘Good job,’ he says.

Jaap can see the camera crew moving closer. He glances at them, only they’re not playing the game, they don’t stop coming.

‘I’ll handle this,’ Smit says.

He turns and intercepts them before they get too close. Jaap knows it’s because Smit wants his face on the news, announcing they’ve finally got the killer, taking the glory.

But somehow he doesn’t care, he’ll leave the politics and media relations to Smit. All he feels, now he finally has Kamp, is a rising anger, surfing the wave of his adrenaline rush. He grabs Kamp by the upper arm and guides him towards the surveillance van.

They reach the back, out of sight of the camera, and Jaap opens a door and shoves Kamp into a sitting position.

He pulls out photos of each victim and holds them in front of him.

His phone’s going off in his pocket; he ignores it.

‘Why did you do it?’

It’s like his head is the same polarity as the photos – wherever Jaap places them Kamp’s face moves away.

A shadow precedes Smit appearing round the corner of the van.

‘Don’t do this here, we’ll take him back to the station. We need everything to be official.’

Jaap ignores him, his focus fully on Kamp.

‘Why did you kill Dafne Koster and Nadine Adelaars?’

The second name pings Kamp’s central nervous system; he jerks like he’s just been stung. His eyes swing round and catch the photos. From the house the baby cries out again, a long, high-pitched wail. Jaap’s phone stops ringing, then immediately starts again.

‘No … nononono … I only … not that one … not her.’

‘You killed both these women, you drugged them and then—’

‘Inspector Rykel, urgent call for you.’

One of the surveillance crew’s moved into his peripheral vision, tentative because he can see this isn’t the time.

‘Kinda busy here,’ Jaap says, eyes still on Kamp.

‘I know, but I’ve been told to tell you it’s really urgent. Like, drop-everything kind of urgent.’

‘Get it,’ Smit says. ‘I’ll take him back to the station, question him there, and the surveillance crew can seal off the house till patrol get here. Also, get Protective Services in for the baby.’

Jaap stares at Kamp, his face pale with shock, before pulling his phone out, the station dispatcher’s number on the screen.

‘I’m in the middle of something,’ he says, ‘so this had better be good.’

The reply’s a triumph of modern technology, Daleked beyond recognition. He starts walking away from the van, searching for better reception. He finds it and asks for a rerun. He can see a uniform walking out with the screaming baby in his arms.

‘Case came in, raised a flag.’

‘What flag?’ Jaap says, a cold sickness seeping through him. He only has one on the system. One which shouldn’t now be raised again.

‘Young woman found dead on a remote beach up on Vlieland. Died of suffocation, had been chased beforehand. Looks the same as your other two.’

‘Time of death?’ Jaap asks. For a split second he hears Kamp’s denial.

Not her.

‘Not official yet, but sometime round lunchtime today and—’

A gunshot explodes into the air. The world crystallizes for a fraction of a second. Jaap can feel the hard edges of his phone against his fingers. Everything’s still.

A second shot joins the first.

He spins round, races back towards the van. When he gets there Smit’s about a metre away, half-standing, half-crouching, his weapon held out in front of him. He can’t disguise the wobble in his arms, the loose panic in his eyes.

Jaap stops dead, his mind a kaleidoscope of conflicting thoughts.

Kamp’s body is sprawled on the road just behind the van, one arm above his head, the other stretched out like he’s directing traffic, cuffs dangling from his left wrist, one section undone.

Just out of reach of his hand, on the blistering tarmac, lies a gun.

Not a model used by the police.

As he gets closer Jaap can hear Kamp trying to say something, his breathing in overdrive.

‘I … I didn’t kill them both …’

Kamp’s whole body judders, he bites the air once with a strangled grunt. Then he’s still.

A wound on his chest blossoms like a time-lapse flower.

Something moves in Jaap’s peripheral vision. He turns to see his own face reflected in the cameraman’s lens, a red dot flashing just beside it.

2

‘Jaap, that’s awful, are you OK?’

He’s in a car, being driven by someone else for once, and after all the chaos of the last few hours he’d suddenly realized that what he really wanted to do was talk to Tanya.

She’s down in Rotterdam, on secondment to a large and seemingly never-ending drugs case, and he’s been missing her more and more.

‘Yeah, I think so,’ he says, still not really sure. ‘The whole thing’s a bit of a mess though, I—’

A thought hits him, stopping up his mouth like a ball-gag. He glances up front, the driver a random uniform simply doing an assigned job. Though he had been assigned it by Smit. Jaap wonders if he’s being paranoid.

‘Look, it’ll be easier if we talk later, I’m due to land there in about an hour, I’ll try and call you then?’

‘Sure, I’m just heading out to get some food, I seem to be craving bacon.’

Tanya loves bacon, always has, always will.

‘Yeah, yeah. Let me guess, pregnant craving?’

‘Of course.’

‘And you’re not just using that to legitimize your bacon fetish?’

‘Inspector Rykel, your cynicism is very disappointing.’

Quarter of an hour later the car pulls into a helipad in Harlingen, where a search and rescue chopper is due to take him over the water to Vlieland.

Only the place is deserted.

He steps out of the car, walks the short distance to the centre of the large H and scans the skies. Nothing. The sun’s dipping towards the horizon where he knows the island of Vlieland lies, and beyond that the North Sea.

‘You want me to wait?’ calls the uniform.

Jaap ignores him, is about to pull out his phone, when he spots something high up, off to the north. He watches for a moment, decides it is heading his way.

‘No,’ Jaap says. ‘You can go.’

As the car pulls off he finds a rusty oil drum slightly away from the helipad and sits down. His presence startles something in the long grass behind, whatever it is rustling away without being seen.

The scene he’d left behind in Amsterdam was a mess, no question, and he still doesn’t understand how it had gone so wrong. He’s been wracking his brain, trying to work out if it was all his fault, if he’d somehow, in the anger which he’d not reeled in enough, made mistakes.

After the shooting Smit had been in shock. Turns out that unlike Jaap, who has been forced to kill in the line of duty, he’d never shot and killed anyone before.

And that’s not something to be taken lightly. Doesn’t matter if the guy deserved it, even if in the dark hours of the case you end up fantasizing about doing it to whoever preyed on the young, extinguishing their fragile potential as if it was nothing. Ultimately it’s still killing another human being.

Smit, of course, has the law on his side. There’s no question of that. But just because it’s the law, doesn’t make it right, doesn’t make it any easier when you close your eyes and see the person you shot dying again and again, the actual moment when consciousness disappears into an infinity of nothing.

So the fight they’d had afterwards, after Smit’s initial shock wore off, wasn’t a surprise. Neither was the news that there will be an investigation.

And Jaap knows that he’s going to be on his own when that all kicks off.

There’s more rustling in the grass behind him, maybe whatever it was he’d scared off earlier has come back with reinforcements.

He plays the scene again, every moment from when he stepped up to Kamp and cuffed him. Can he be sure that both cuffs clicked together? Could he have missed one? And, worryingly, no matter how hard he tries, he can’t seem to dredge up a memory of checking Kamp for weapons.

Fuck, he thinks. Fuckfuckfuck.

All of which is bad. But it’s only a distraction from the thing which is pulsing inside his head, his whole body, tearing at his mind.

Kamp denied killing the second victim, Nadine Adelaar.

The rhythmic thud of the chopper saves him from his thoughts, and he soon has to clamp his hands over his ears as the fluorescent yellow machine comes in to land, the downdraft buffeting him, making his progress towards it difficult.

The door slides open and the pilot, little more than headphones, flight goggles and an arm, motions him inside.

They lift off, the lurch in Jaap’s stomach reminding him he’s not eaten for hours, and the chopper circles round till they’re heading out over the water separating the mainland from the string of islands which follow the north Netherlands’ coast. Of which his destination, Vlieland, is the second one up.

Jaap tries to clear his mind and just enjoy the sensation of flying above the water, but no matter what he does it keeps going back to the case.

Specifically Kamp’s denial. He didn’t deny both murders, which Jaap could understand, but only one. And yet both bodies, despite the minor differences in their deaths, had something in common which was incontrovertible: large amounts of scopolamine in their blood.

When it had come up in the extended tox report, Jaap had not even heard of the stuff. After some fruitless research, calling round the various labs the police used for their forensics, Google filled him in.

‘Dragon’s breath’ they call it in Columbia, where the drug originates, processed from the seeds of a genus of flowering shrub called Brugmansia. They’re primarily grown for their flowers, which hang like somnolent trumpets from the branches, giving off an intense, some say intoxicating, fragrance. But the beauty is all surface; scopolamine, once refined from the seed, has been used for years there to rob people, to rape them, to do any manner of things a sick mind does when confronted with the opportunity.

Victims of scopolamine – those that are lucky enough just to be robbed when under its narcotic influence – describe the same thing: they all just did what they were told. A man might be slipped some in a drink by a prostitute and before he know’s what’s happening it’s the next morning and he finds his bank accounts have been emptied, and quite possibly everything in his flat or house as well. In fact, the only thing the victims usually have left at this stage is no recollection of what happened, and the mother of all hangovers which pounds their heads for days. Though it turns out not knowing what happened to you in that gap in memory is far worse, and far more persistant. The not knowing is what haunts the victims.

And if it was administered to a woman, well, that’s just going to be worse. Much worse.

Despite this, the only time the drug usually surfaces outside of Columbia is in minute doses in a prescription patch for extreme travel sickness, where it’s listed as Hyoscine hydrobromide. But when Jaap had asked the question the response came through that a body would have to have been covered head to toe in the things for months to get the kind of blood levels seen in both victims.

The rarity of scopolamine was in itself enough to link the two deaths; add the suffocation and it was reasonable to assume the killer was the same. Jaap had enough on Kamp for the first death, Dafne Koster, but it was really the scopolamine which clinched it, linking him to the second.

But maybe that was wrong, he thinks now. Maybe I should have dug deeper.

They’re heading into the sun, and soon he can see a slip of land rising from the water up ahead.

His phone buzzes in his pocket, he fishes it out and reads the message confirming that a patrol car is waiting for him on Vlieland.

In the water below he spots a yacht, tilted at an angle, the taut sail turned golden by the sun. He snaps a few quick photos, selects the best one and sends it to Tanya.

As the flight continues he starts to feel his breathing slow down, and as they get closer, with the sky turning red and the land darkening, Jaap is surprised to find himself humming Ride of the Valkyries.

3

The dune path is flanked with swaying grasses, seed heads desperate to reach out and touch Jaap as he moves past. The ocean’s briny tang pushes against his face as he starts out across the beach.

In front of him the dying sun bleeds into a vast sea.

Hours earlier he’d been on the cusp of cracking what was thought to be the Netherlands’ first serial-killer case of the twenty-first century, a case which had exploded into the headlines, the after-shock reverberating there for months.

I didn’t kill them both.

Kamp’s last words, unease pricking Jaap’s brain.

He sees him lying on the road, dying in front of him, he feels Smit’s quiet panic, the fear of what could have happened, the fear of what did happen.

And the loose cuff, evidence that he’d fucked up.

Now he may never burrow down deep enough to know what really happened.

Because Jaap can’t figure out why Kamp would admit to one killing, but not the other.

Unless Kamp was speaking the truth.

Which could, given he’s about to walk up to a possible third body, rip open the guts of his near-finished case.

Thirty or forty metres ahead, dark figures silhouette against the vibrant red. They’re at the water’s edge, standing by the body like a guard of honour.

Right now he expects to hear the whirling cry of gulls above him, but it seems eerily quiet, as if the water, earth and sky are all watching him, waiting to see what he will do. Judging him on his actions.

Beneath his feet the sand is a tricksy lover, yielding unpredictably to his shoes. As he walks, unusual muscles in his calves and ankles are forced into an intricate choreography just to keep him upright.

Ahead the muted thump and hiss of the waves, behind him darkness sucks away at his back.

One of the uniforms turns as he approaches the group, revealing a sheet lying on the sand. Small waves the colour of blood and fire wet the fabric’s seaward edge with exploratory laps. The unmistakable configuration of peaks and troughs tells him that under the sheet is a body lying on its back.

He glances out to sea, something catching his eye, and for a second he thinks he sees a gull, flying low, a wing tip skimming the waves on a turn, a dark mark streaming across the bloody sun.

He blinks and it’s gone.

‘What have we got?’ he asks as he comes to a stop, wanting to search for the bird but tearing his eyes away, back to the figures. He now sees one of them is a forensic, Max Bakker, who he’s worked with before.

A case just over two years ago. The same case which led to his daughter Floortje’s kidnapping, and ultimately her death.

The memory stings hard, lighting up the wound all over again. But, he notices with a kind of amazed detachment, it’s not as intense as it used to be, as if the voltage has lowered over time.

And there’s a kind of guilt implied in that. Something inside urges him to feel it more.

The last slip of sun bleeds away, and the sky darkens, as if mourning its passing.

‘Hang on,’ Max says, peeling off a glove and thumb-typing something on his phone. He holds it out from his chin, as if he were long-sighted. Elongated shadows streak up his face from the sickly light.

It reminds Jaap of a camping trip he’d been on as a kid; buckled down in their tent, he and several others had taken it in turns to hold the torch and try and frighten each other. It hadn’t worked.

Now, years later, and given all that he’s seen, Jaap wonders why anybody would actually want to be frightened.

Max is still working his phone. He’s probably the only person in the universe who’s left the clicker sound on for typing. Jaap’s not sure if he’s writing notes on the crime scene or just texting a friend, arranging a post-body drink.

But, he decides, he doesn’t mind either way. Things will start soon enough. He thinks of the argument he’d had with Smit, adrenaline pitting them against each other. Smit’s tirade of accusations, Jaap’s robust defence of himself.

Because he’d never be so sloppy.

But was I? he thinks, going over it all again, trying to work out if the surge of anger he’d felt when he’d arrested Kamp had forced him into making mistakes which could have cost him his own, or Smit’s, life.

A wave reaches out and strokes the sand. Jaap watches as it returns to the sea. Watches as one more comes to do the same. And another.

Smit had been lucky, no question, Kamp’s shot going wide, allowing his boss to retaliate.

And yet with that bullet, he realizes, standing here on the beach with the sea and the earth and the dark sky, his chance of finding out what really went on may have died.

‘So,’ Max says, putting away his phone, his face disappearing into the darkness. ‘Wanna see? We kept it fresh for you.’

Max pulls out a torch, runs the beam along the sheet from the feet-end up, quietly singing the Jaws theme, da dum, da dum, da dum da dum then daaaaa as the light reaches the head and dances around in a frenzy. Jaap shoots his hand out, grasping Max’s wrist, forcing it still. Max gives in and holds the torch steady. In response Jaap releases his wrist as a uniform’s gloved hand reaches into the cold light and grips the end of the fabric.

Jaap feels like looking away.

The darkness all around is immense and suffocating at the same time, and he’s suddenly aware of his hands, heavy and ripe with blood.

The glove whips away the sheet, the torch beam remaining steady.

Jaap scans the body: a young woman, sandals, tight jeans ending just below the knee, and a sleeveless pink T-shirt with a cartoon kitten on the front, paw raised in a wave, head cocked to one side, eyes slits.

Her arms are behind her back, forcing her torso off the ground so that for a second Jaap thinks of a woman doing yoga on the beach.

He looks at the head.

‘Nasty, isn’t it?’ Max says.

But Jaap hardly hears, sound receding into the background like he’s just plunged head first into the nearby sea.

He moves in closer, feels the magnetic push and pull of death.

In the victim’s mouth is some kind of round plastic tube, though it’s not hollow, the end covered with a narrow lattice. Silver tape wraps round her head, holding the tube in place, making a perfect seal round her mouth, and another stretch of tape completely covers her nose. Another young woman, killed in a different way, but ultimately the same: being deprived of the oxygen the body needs to burn fuel efficiently.

None of this is conclusive, he tries to tell himself. Not unless she tests positive for scopolamine.

But somehow he just knows what the report will say, can see it already, the positive mark next to the name of the substance he’d not even heard of three months ago.

He squats down, getting a closer look, the toes of his shoes slowly sinking into the sand, moistened by earlier waves.

‘Bloods?’

‘Pulled earlier. They were due to be picked up by the chopper which dropped you off. Results back in the morning.’

Jaap holds out his hand and Max places the torch in it. Jaap grips it overhand-style, and brings it closer to the woman’s head.

He’s starting to make sense of it, even though part of his mind is resisting.

‘You know what it is?’ Max asks, jolting Jaap back.

‘Yeah, all right,’ Jaap says, straightening up, feeling the vast void in his stomach. ‘Tell me.’

‘It’s a valve,’ Max says. ‘A one-way valve.’

‘So you’re saying …’ Jaap says, not wanting to hear it.

‘I’m saying …’ Max pulls out a cigarette and attempts to light it, cupping his hand round the Zippo to stop the flame writhing around like it’s in pain. He finally gets it lit and looks straight at Jaap. ‘I’m saying she could only breathe out.’

4

‘So you’re the hotshot?’

Station Chief Wieland Stuppor is a single syrupwaffel away from a major coronary event.

And the fact that Jaap’s been parachuted, almost literally, into his island fiefdom doesn’t seem to be helping much.

They’re outside the island’s station, a building Jaap has yet to set foot in, but he can tell from where he’s standing that it’s little more than a converted bungalow with a blue POLITIE sign tacked on to the wall.

The night is cooler here than the sweltering density of Amsterdam. The welcome too is turning out to be downright frosty.

‘Inspector Rykel,’ Jaap says, holding out his hand.

Stuppor doesn’t take it. He has a face like a statue from an island thousands of miles away in another ocean. An island, Jaap remembers, where the population were so smart they used up all the resources available to them and ended their genetic legacy by killing each other off completely. Jaap imagines the last one alive, howling into the darkness on an island devoid of food, and with no trees left to build an escape raft.

‘I’ll need everything you’ve got so far,’ he says, retracting his unshook hand.

Midnight can’t be far away and he still doesn’t know where he’ll be sleeping. Stuppor stares at him for a moment then nods him inside. Jaap follows, past the front desk, which isn’t manned, and into the main room at the back. Three more desks – two of which are being driven by uniforms – and morgue-like strip lights that hang from the ceiling and illuminate the general air of decay.

Through a door is Stuppor’s office, which looks out onto the car park at the back and two cones of light shining down the wall of a building on the far side. They go in and Stuppor settles behind his desk.

Jaap looks around for something to sit on.

He’s somehow not surprised when he comes up with nothing.

This is just petty.

Then again, he figures there’s a reason Stuppor’s ended up in charge of an island where birds outnumber the population ten to one. Not that he really knows anything about the place; he just assumes from what little he’s seen of it in the last few hours that it probably is the kind of terrain where wildlife makes a bigger contribution to the carbon cycle than humans.

‘Here’s what we know—’ starts Stuppor.

Jaap walks out. He selects the free chair, which happens to be at the furthest desk, and drags it across decaying lino the colour of used dishwater. One of the men, heavily tanned and not looking like police at all except for the uniform, jerks off a bit of air and nods his head towards Stuppor’s office.

As Jaap tries to get it through the narrow doorway he gouges the door frame with a chair leg. Dry paint flakes off, showering the floor.

‘Oops,’ he says, positioning it opposite Stuppor’s desk.

He sits down.

‘You were saying?’ he prompts. He wishes he had a syrupwaffel to offer Stuppor.

‘Body was discovered at 13:12,’ Stuppor says after a power-game pause. ‘Young couple going for a romantic stroll.’

From Stuppor’s tone it sounds like he regards a romantic stroll as somewhat akin to a full BDSM orgy with a hefty dose of transgender chem-sex thrown in for good measure. He shuffles some paper on his desk, eventually finding what he’s after and holding it out to Jaap, forcing him to lean forwards.

It’s a transcript of the call, and a few sheets detailing the first officer to the scene’s notes. He glances through it before dropping it back on Stuppor’s desk.

‘Says here the victim was wearing a bracelet with the name “Heleen” engraved on it. Has she been ID’d yet?’

‘No. We’re checking that now.’

Jaap spots a map on the wall to his right and turns to scrutinize it. The island’s a thin, lazy sickle shape, one of a chain broadly mirroring the shape of the mainland. The west coast, where the body was found, faces out into the North Sea; Oost-Vlieland, the only ferry port, sits on the east coast, sheltered from the tide and prevailing winds.

‘How frequent are the ferries to the mainland?’

‘This time of year, every couple of hours.’

Given his perfunctory answers, Jaap feels like Stuppor’s not totally invested in the process.

‘Say the killer wanted to get across the island quickly, how long would it take for them to get to Oost-Vlieland?’

‘If they had a bike they could do it in about half an hour.’

‘By car?’

‘Visitors to the island can’t have cars, only residents are allowed them.’

‘And you’re sure it’s not a resident because …?’ asks Jaap. ‘Actually, what I’m more interested in are the people who were booked on the ferries set to depart after the body was found – where did you keep them?’

Jaap sees that it might not even take a syrupwaffel to do the business. He also feels that he’s getting to the bottom of Stuppor’s lack of co-operation.

‘OK, you’re telling me you didn’t stop the ferries,’ Jaap says, not even framing it as a question. Because he knows the answer, both to that and the reason for the warm welcome.

Nobody likes to be caught out on a colossal fuck-up.

Which is, Jaap can see, exactly what’s happening here.

The image of Kamp dying on the road with only one cuff done up makes a brief appearance, aligned with the word ‘fuck-up’. He pushes it aside just as Stuppor comes clean.

‘There was a ferry which departed at 15:00 for Harlingen. Unfortunately it wasn’t stopped,’ Stuppor says. ‘The person responsible has been reprimanded.’

Jaap decides he needs to check just how long the surveillance team lost sight of Kamp for.

‘Well,’ he says, getting up, ‘that’s good. Looks like we’re going to have some fun here. Where am I staying tonight?’

Stuppor smiles for the first time since Jaap met him. ‘Don’t worry, that’s all taken care of,’ he says, gesturing to the door.

The reason for the smile soon becomes obvious. Turns out he’s staying somewhere which doesn’t even hold one star.

The island’s cell block. Which contains two cells, both of them empty.

‘Tourist season,’ shrugs Stuppor as he shows Jaap to the nearest one, where a fresh set of towels is folded neatly on the solid bed. ‘The whole island’s booked out for the summer holidays.’

‘Thanks,’ Jaap says. ‘Looks comfortable.’

5

So comfortable he decides to head out for a walk.

He hits the main road, a stretch of tarmac with no centre line and edges decaying into the sandy grasslands all around. It’s deserted, and doesn’t have any street lights. The stars are bright though, and the tip of a fat moon is just oozing off the horizon, spilling a greasy yellow slick onto the dark water separating the island from the mainland. He can hear the distant surf as well, a kind of muffled roar.

It’s idyllic, a million miles away from the jumbled solidity of Amsterdam’s centre.

Jaap thinks of the girl on the beach, the one-way valve taped into her mouth.

Suddenly he’s not sure he likes idyllic.

He checks his phone, hoping for a message from Tanya. There isn’t one, so he sends her a text. The progress bar falters halfway, hangs there for ages before zooming to the end in a fit of enthusiasm.

He’s missing Tanya, hopes she’ll be posted back to Amsterdam soon. They’re going to have to start preparing, a big change coming their way. It strikes him suddenly that the change may be bigger than either of them thinks.

His phone goes off and he pulls it out, expecting to see Tanya’s face on the screen. But it’s an Amsterdam number he doesn’t recognize.

‘Inspector Rykel, I’m Chief Superintendent Laura Vetter,’ a voice tells him. ‘I believe you were involved in an incident earlier in the day, the death of a suspect, Franceso Kamp. Is that correct?’

Jaap’s suddenly aware of the back of his neck.

‘There was an incident earlier today,’ he concedes, wondering why he feels on full alert all of sudden.

‘Right. Well, as you know the death of a member of the public caused by a police officer is a serious matter, and I’ve been tasked with looking into this.’

‘Kamp wasn’t a member of the public, he was a murderer.’

‘Not until he’s been convicted in a court of law.’

‘He’s dead, so I guess that’s not going to happen.’

‘Precisely, which is why I have to get to the bottom of this.’

Jaap had once gone to an exhibition of M. C. Escher’s work; he remembers the staircases leading back round to each other. He takes a deep breath before replying.

‘OK, what do you need?’

‘We’ve already taken a statement from Station Chief Henk Smit, and I need to take a statement from you as well. Then we can go from there. However, I’ve heard that you’re in the middle of a case and you’re out of town this evening, so we can meet tomorrow at ten a.m. at your station. Does that suit?’

Not really, no, thinks Jaap as he hangs up, having agreed. He doesn’t even know if he’ll be off the island by then. In fact, all things considered, it seems highly unlikely, but he decides he’ll deal with that in the morning.

He goes over the whole scene again in his mind, trying to work out how he’d managed not to do the cuffs up properly. And the gun. How could he have missed it?

Fucking idiot, he thinks.

Headlights appear out of the darkness behind him and for a few moments his shadow shows him to be a towering giant. He feels like putting his hands up beside his head and growling like a beast from a kids’ horror story.

Instead he steps off the road and the car slows, pulls up beside him. A window cranks down and Jaap recognizes the tanned uniform from earlier. Except he’s no longer in uniform.

‘Hey,’ the man says, leaning out the window. ‘I’m Arno Janssen, didn’t get introduced earlier.’

‘Jaap Rykel,’ Jaap says as they soul-shake awkwardly through the car’s window.

‘Thought you’d be staying in, enjoying your accommodation.’

‘It’s kind of luxury overkill,’ Jaap says. ‘Your boss going through the male menopause or something?’

Arno laughs, puts the car into neutral, the engine shifting pitch. Jaap notices the hand on the gearstick has a tiny glowing ember floating just above it.

‘Don’t think you can blame it on hormones,’ Arno says. ‘I think he’s got asshole coded in his DNA.’

‘A wise man once told me you only need one asshole in your life. More than that’s just not necessary.’

‘Agreed. C’mon, you can stay at my place. Long as you don’t mind a sofa.’

‘A sofa will be just fine.’

The glowing tip isn’t a cigarette, Jaap discovers when he gets in.

‘Uh …’ Arno says, holding up the blunt, ‘I’m off duty.’

‘Yeah, but they stopped that a while back, didn’t you hear? They said that police officers have a duty to uphold morality even when off duty.’

‘Morality, fuck. It’s just cannabis, not krokodil.’

Jaap stares at him, reaches out and takes it. He notices the tattoo on Arno’s wrist, a circle of intertwining thorns. He winds his window, the car so old it has to be done manually. It creaks on the way down.

‘Don’t, that’s the last of my—’

Jaap lifts the blunt up to the window space. He takes a hit. A big one.

He’s not done it for years, not his kind of scene. But the day’s been shit, and he feels like he needs some help with it. He keeps the smoke in his lungs, the urge to cough growing urgent, but just about manages to hold it down.

He hands it back. ‘Fuck it,’ he says, blowing an aromatic stream of smoke out the window, ‘we’re not paid for twenty-four hours, are we?’

‘No,’ Arno says, putting the car into gear and lurching it forward. ‘No, we’re not.’

Jaap discovers the seat he’s in is actually quite comfortable, the world seems softer suddenly, more rounded, and he finds himself relaxing into it, enjoying the movement as the car heads into the night.

He starts to feels more welcome.

PENGUIN BOOKS

BEFORE THE DAWN

Jake Woodhouse

BEFORE THE DAWN

PENGUIN BOOKS

DAY ONE

1

2

3

4

5