Герман Кох - Amsterdam Noir

Everyone on and around the Spui was shocked by the murders. Ella and I came back from London when we heard. Until they caught the godforsaken bastards, we returned to our parents’ houses and stayed cooped up in our bedrooms behind closed curtains. Later, my coworkers told me that the Athenaeum was mobbed during the weeks after the crime. Regular customers dropped by two or three times a day to see if anyone had new information, and the same was true of the local residents, the other shopkeepers, the bar owners, and especially the journalists who frequented Café De Zwart. Even the right-wing snobs in Café Hoppe thirsted to learn who had the murders on their conscience as much as they thirsted for another round. And the same two words were on everyone’s lips: Hells Angels.

The day before my house — without photos or even an asking price — was listed in the real-estate website Funda’s Silent Sale section, I found a plastic Media Markt bag hanging on my front doorknob. It wasn’t quite ten o’clock, and I’d just dashed out to pick up a loaf of bread. Inside the bag was a cat, the black-and-white from the Luxembourg, its head severed from its body.

Fear — real, razor-sharp, deathly fear — apparently brings clarity along with it. I went upstairs with the idea that — for the time being, at least — I was safe. They couldn’t kill me, that would complicate the sale of the house. Which gave me the courage to check every room, every drawer. Only then did I lean over the kitchen sink to vomit coffee and bile and weep until I had no tears left to shed.

With the cat wrapped in a hand towel, I crossed the square to the café. I didn’t notify Theo at first, and I lied to the Luxembourg’s owner about where I’d found the poor creature. “Around the corner,” I said, “in the Voetboogstraat.”

He disappeared into his office behind the bar, sobbing, the beheaded cat cradled in his arms. The manager made me a double espresso and asked me if I’d heard anything about Ella yet.

“What a shitty welcome back to the Spui,” she said.

I called Bert. Because Ella had told me to, and because I couldn’t handle the situation on my own.

“If you hadn’t called today,” he said, “I’d’ve called you tomorrow morning. Ella’s instructions.”

That was all the introduction we needed, all we needed to trust each other. Which was good, because Bert showed up at my door an hour later with a laptop, suitcase, sleeping bag, and rolled-up camping pad.

Bert has worked at the newspaper for half his life. Ella is his boss. Her silence about her work extends to the identities of her colleagues, which is why Bert and I had never previously met. I knew his name from the paper and from Ella’s instructions. I could hear her voice inside my head: He’s tall, clever, and a good man — and that’s exactly what you’ll need.

For the time that he stayed with me, he slept on his pad in the living room, close to the steps that led down to the front door. He watched over me, cooked for me, took on the management of my life.

I told him everything, even the things Theo had warned me not to talk about. They were, after all, my things. Including the cat.

“The message is loud and clear,” said Bert. “They’re watching you. But of course you already knew that.”

He made sure the locksmith did a good job, after double-

checking with his contacts in the security sector, since the lock business isn’t always on the up-and-up. Then we made a shopping list for the day and walked together to the Albert Heijn supermarket on the Koningsplein. “This is how we’ll do it,” said Bert. “We’ll show them you’re still here and not alone. The paper’s paying.”

Amsterdammers of my generation are sure to remember the Spui Murders, but it was different for Bert, who was about ten years my junior. After an hour’s research — with his phone on speaker so he could ask questions of his sources at the same time his skilled fingers danced across the Internet — he’d brought himself up to speed on Mimi and Mark’s case. He told me what he’d learned, so I could provide additional details and make corrections. Everything seemed to indicate, he said, that the police had arrested the real murderers. “But of course you already knew that.”

Bert is the kind of guy who can say things like that without being annoying.

I wasn’t so sure. “There has to be a reason they want me to sell the house.”

“Those brothers were released after doing fifteen years, did you know that?”

“No, and I wish you hadn’t told me.”

“No worries, their friends got rid of them... um, about twelve years later. Huh, I wrote that story myself.”

Bert explained that motorcycle gangs were part of his beat, even back then. “Now I understand why Ella didn’t want that assignment.”

“They weren’t in the Hells Angels,” I said.

“How do you know?”

“They always denied it, and so did the actual gang members.”

“Bullshit. The police were able to identify the brand of the bicycle chain Mark was beaten with. Hells Angels all the way.”

A minute later, he held up his left hand and said, “Wait a second.” He studied the screen of his laptop, the fingers of his right hand working the touch pad. When he looked up, he told me he had a new idea. “Is it possible they broke in to prove something? Could it have been some kind of initiation rite that spiraled out of control?”

Three days later, the realtor called to tell me that J. de Vries had offered a hundred thousand euros above the asking price.

I was speechless, and after a moment the man added, “As compensation for your loss.”

They’d kidnapped Ella to blackmail me out of my house, but now they were being generous about it?

“Do you believe that explanation?” I demanded.

The realtor didn’t respond. Instead, dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s, he asked if I had any questions about the formal settlement. He knew I knew he was just an errand boy.

I told him I wanted to sign the papers as soon as possible.

“They’ve proposed the middle of next week.”

“Make it sooner. And I want a guarantee from the bank.”

“I’ve already got it,” he said.

Something the realtor said got me thinking, and Bert agreed with me that it was strange.

“No one would talk about ‘your loss’ in a situation like this,” Bert said. “Compensation for damages or inconvenience, that I would have bought.”

Today, as I look back and try to figure out when and how things went wrong, it seems to me that this choice of words, which sounded almost intentional, was a clue. I still can’t figure out, though, how we could have made better use of it.

The contract seemed perfectly straightforward. Bert — who like Ella had connections with the Amsterdam police — forwarded the buyer’s address and passport number to Theo.

“This Jan de Vries — that’s his full name — is seventy-four and a filthy-rich old geezer,” Bert told me, after an hour of research. “I can’t find anything unusual about him, which is unusual all by itself. They know him on the business desk. A smooth operator, avoids publicity.”

“I want you to go with me to the signing,” I said that evening, as he stood in the kitchen slicing vegetables for a ratatouille. “But of course you already know that.”

There was no way Bert would have allowed me to go by myself, so the next afternoon we strolled arm-in-arm to the realtor’s office around the corner. Theo had suggested I think of it like any other business transaction, so that’s what I did. There’d be plainclothes cops in the area, he assured me, quiet and invisible, ready to step in if they were needed.