The Wrong Girl Read online

  Online some of his contacts had whined about them. How they were racist stereotypes. Kuyper had done what he liked to do on the web: put people right. Black Pete probably had nothing to do with Africa. The idea stemmed from an older, darker tradition rooted in something more mysterious than mere geography. One theory was they represented devils, enslaved by Saint Nicholas in the name of good.

  He wasn’t entirely sure any of this was accurate. But he liked to correct people all the same.

  As he watched a second colourful figure emerged from the side of the Herenmarkt. It looked as if this one had been hiding behind the children’s slides there. Waiting for someone.

  Saskia waved and shouted something. He could hear her excited cry rise up from the cobbled street.

  The new one wore dark green, a brown cap, pink feather in it. He didn’t smile at all.

  If he heard the girl Black Pete didn’t show it. He pushed a rusty bike along the street then walked inside the ancient iron pissoir that stood at the end of Herenmarkt by the bridge that led over the Brouwersgracht into the city.

  Kids don’t always get what they ask for, Henk Kuyper told himself. And went back to his messages.

  By the time they got to Leidseplein and the climax of the parade Bakker was very glad they hadn’t brought Sam. She was a country girl from Dokkum, in Amsterdam only since the spring. Back home she’d watched the Sinterklaas parade on TV once or twice. Nothing prepared her for the reality.

  The city had turned into a single, happy throng of humanity. From the waterfront to the centre the masses stretched, then out to the museums and the Canal Ring. Old and young with glitter and decorations in their hair. Fathers with toddlers perched on their shoulders. Mothers holding up tiny babies too young to understand what the noise and colour were all about. Everyone fighting for a glimpse of Sinterklaas himself, a red-robed figure astride a tall white horse moving down Rokin, waving to the crowds.

  Vos and Van der Berg must have worked this day countless times. They knew where to stand, what to do. Listen to the radio mostly, stay at the edge of the multitude. Watch for pickpockets, drunks and doped-up pests. Then carefully weed them out of the equation.

  One light-fingered Black Pete was already in custody, lifted by Van der Berg with extraordinary delicacy as the man tried to wriggle the wallet out of the back pocket of a man fool enough to wear nothing but a sweatshirt and jeans for the day. They’d been more generous towards the beer-filled fools who were making genial nuisances of themselves. A quick nod from Van der Berg, a backup word from Vos, a filthy glance from Bakker and the idiots were on their way.

  Uniformed officers were handling the visible side of the police operation – guiding people into the allotted areas, keeping them back from the route the Sinterklaas parade was taking through the heart of Amsterdam. It was containment, not control. Three hundred thousand people . . . no police force in the world could hope to do more.

  They’d now followed the parade on its last loop, to Leidseplein. It was twenty past three. In ten minutes Sinterklaas would be here, to be welcomed by the mayor. Then at four he’d address the children of the city from the theatre balcony and after that everyone would begin to go their own way, to the hot dog stands, the sweet stalls and the shops. Then finally, satisfied, to home.

  Vos and Van der Berg were talking cheerily to a man in a clown costume who could barely stand, telling him to go home and lie down.

  A meal with these two men. Usually they seemed to live off bar snacks and beer. She couldn’t imagine what Vos meant by ‘proper dinner’. Or what kind of restaurant he liked. It was seven months since they met during the doll’s house case. She was now a full member of his plain-clothes team. They were close somehow. As much friends as colleagues. Vos did that to everyone. She felt sorry for him. In a way, she suspected, he felt sorry for her as a solitary young woman from outside town with few friends in Amsterdam.

  Fewer than he knew. None, if she was honest.

  She was starting to wonder where she’d spend Christmas – in Amsterdam or home in Dokkum – when she heard a rising angry voice behind and turned to look. A tall woman in an expensive-looking, fashionable coat was berating a uniformed female officer about something, her right hand clinging tightly to a bored-looking young girl in a bright-pink jacket with ponies on it.

  Bakker ambled over, flashed her ID, smiled and offered to help.

  ‘Why won’t you listen to me?’ the woman said, getting madder by the second. ‘There’s something wrong here.’

  Oude Nieuwstraat was a five-minute walk from the Kuypers’ house in Herenmarkt. A narrow, ancient lane behind the Singel canal. Hanna Bublik, just nine months in the city after fleeing Georgia, lived there with her eight-year-old daughter Natalya in the gable room on the top floor of a narrow terrace building near Lijnbaanssteeg. Their home was scarcely bigger than Henk Kuyper’s office, two single beds, a bathroom and toilet shared with a young Filipina woman, Chantal Santos, who lived on the floor below.

  At first glance during the day it seemed a pedestrian street much like any other in Amsterdam: locked-up bikes, a corner grocer, a couple of coffee shops, some adult stores. Around the corner in Spuistraat you could eat Thai, sign up for Scientology, catch a tram or walk to the city museum. But there were too many large, blank windows in Oude Nieuwstraat for it to be a normal part of the city. The authorities had designated this the Singelgebied, a second red-light district after the larger De Wallen. Cheaper, more often used by a few locals. Plenty of cabins for rent.

  Hanna knew the afternoon was going to be taken up with Sinterklaas. So, eager to make what money she could, she’d left her daughter with the Santos girl that morning and chanced on a few hours in the nearest free unit she could find.

  Two customers. One Danish, one from London. Quick, easy, casual business. After costs she was seventy euros in pocket. Enough to see Natalya through the afternoon.

  This year, starting with Sinterklaas, she’d know a happy Christmas. That was a promise Hanna had made herself. Natalya was just a baby when the Russians and the Ossetians entered their home city of Gori during the brief South Ossetia war. Her husband, Natalya’s father, died in the fighting. He was a baker from a village near the border. His relatives didn’t want to know his Georgian wife and child when he was dead. Her own family, who’d never liked the idea she’d married an Ossetian, felt the same way. Poverty and desperation finally drove her west, hitching with her daughter across Europe. Finally doing what it took to keep them in food.

  ‘Mum,’ Natalya said, trying on her new jacket. ‘Where’d you get this?’

  Pink. My Little Pony patterns on the fabric. Natalya was growing. Asking questions. Starting to understand things. The Dutch authorities treated them with respect. She was going to a good school, quickly learning the language, English too. But still they lived in a tiny room on the top of a building in the middle of a red-light district while Hanna worked afternoons and nights, six days a week usually.

  ‘I found it. Maybe some rich people didn’t like it.’ A smile. ‘Do you?’

  The little girl beamed back. Blonde hair. Pale, smart face. Children were shaped by the world they experienced. In her eight years Natalya Bublik had lost an adoring father, her home, been rejected by both sides of her family, seen her mother reduced to prostitution on the road.

  She knew a lie when she heard it. Knew when to ignore it too.

  Natalya hugged the jacket, the most expensive piece of clothing she’d ever had. In six months it would be too small for her. Her mother would be wondering how to earn the money to replace the thing.

  There was an easier answer beckoning. Chantal Santos kept pushing it at her. Stop working the cabins alone, as a freelance. Sign up with the Turk who had connections throughout the area. Cem Yilmaz, a big, muscular hulk with a fancy apartment near Dam Square and a route into all the high-class escort services in town. Yilmaz controlled much of the top end of the sex trade. Through the Santos girl he’d promised he could double the am
ount she earned, for half the time on her back or on her knees.

  ‘Let’s go, Mum,’ Natalya said and took her mother’s hand.

  First winter in Amsterdam. She was a good mother, had done her research. Natalya had to remember this forever. They’d walk out into the busy streets, watch Saint Nicholas ride through the city on horseback. Listen to him address the children from the balcony of the theatre in Leidseplein. Then eat chips and mayonnaise together, giggle like two little girls. And, finally, go back to the gable room in Oude Nieuwstraat where Hanna would tuck Natalya into the little bed then find a free cabin for the night, strip down to her bra and pants, sit on the stool at the window, wait for a customer. Answer the bell. Negotiate the fee. Open the door. Shut the curtains. Close her mind. Get the job done. Wait for the next one.

  Chantal caught them on the stairs. Natalya’s head went down at the sight of her. The two didn’t get on. It was understandable. The Filipina kid didn’t try to hide what she did. She was proud of her dark, alluring looks, boasted of the money they brought in. Sometimes Hanna Bublik had no choice but to leave her daughter alone with this young woman.

  ‘Wait in the hall,’ she said and watched the pink jacket bob down the stairs.

  ‘He’s been on at me again,’ the girl told her when Natalya was gone.

  ‘Yilmaz?’

  ‘Cem.’

  She was wearing a skimpy T-shirt, what looked like a bikini underneath. Hanna wondered how this kid would feel the day she realized she was getting old.

  ‘I don’t want to work for anyone. I told you.’

  ‘You work for someone every time you take off your pants. Don’t you?’

  Hanna reached out and touched the girl’s shoulder, turned it. The badge of ownership was there in her skin, bright-blue, crudely done. Two letters in a fancy script, the initials of his name, ‘CY’.

  ‘I don’t want any man’s tattoo on my back. Tell him thanks but no thanks.’

  ‘Didn’t hurt so much,’ Chantal grumbled.

  ‘It’s not about the pain,’ she said and wondered if this kid had any idea of the things she’d seen in her twenty-eight years.

  ‘Two thousand euros he gave me just for getting that.’ She tapped the blue scrawl. It was only a couple of weeks old. The sardonic smile dropped for a moment. ‘Gets worse if you hold out. And I don’t have to sit in some stupid window any more.’

  A voice rose from down the stairs.

  ‘Mum? Are we going?’

  Hanna Bublik forced herself to smile. She needed Chantal. Sometimes anyway.

  ‘Thanks for looking after Natalya this morning.’

  ‘Don’t work mornings,’ the girl said. ‘Don’t need to.’

  ‘Are you coming to meet Sinterklaas?’

  A grin. Quick and insincere.

  ‘Got a sugar daddy of my own to see, thanks. Cem fixed it.’

  There was something else she wanted to say.

  ‘Nat told me she has nightmares. About monsters. Something big and black. Coming for you two. Up the stairs.’

  ‘Natalya. Nightmares . . . ?’

  ‘Monsters in broad daylight.’ The Filipina girl laughed a little. ‘Kids . . .’

  ‘Have fun,’ Hanna said then walked downstairs and took her daughter by her hand out into Oude Nieuwstraat.

  She asked Natalya about the monsters. They’d turned up a year or two after Gori. She thought they’d left them behind in Georgia.

  The answer when it came didn’t amount to much. Chantal Santos, a dumb whore who was getting herself deep into something she didn’t understand, probably got more.

  ‘What did they look like?’ Hanna asked even though she knew the answer. Could picture them herself.

  Black demons full of smoke and thunder, fire in their guts, alongside sparks and tiny forks of lightning. The kind that had swarmed over Gori that bloody night the world collapsed around them.

  ‘The way they always do,’ her daughter replied in a small, sure voice and left it there.

  Hanna pulled her cheap black nylon anorak around her. It was cold out on the street.

  ‘There are no monsters,’ she said. ‘If there were I’d kill them.’

  Arms folded, as sceptical as the uniform woman beside her, Laura Bakker listened to the story of the woman called Renata Kuyper. Smartly dressed with neat brown hair, a narrow, anxious face and a Belgian accent. She and her daughter had ridden to the square in a cargo trike from the Herenmarkt, parked in a side street, watched the parade. All the way from home to Leidseplein a Black Pete had followed them on a rusty bike. Watching, not coming close. Not offering sweets. Just stalking.

  The uniform officer glanced at Bakker and rolled her eyes.

  ‘Why would he do that?’ Bakker asked as the band in front of the theatre struck up again with cheesy festive music.

  ‘How would I know?’

  There was a shrill and edgy air about her.

  ‘It’s Sinterklaas. We’ve got lots of Black Petes around,’ Bakker said. ‘Hundreds. Perhaps you saw more than one . . .’

  ‘He was on a bike. Following us. Watching us. He was wearing green . . .’

  ‘Lots of them wear green,’ the uniform woman cut in.

  ‘Look . . . look . . .’

  ‘Perhaps you and your daughter should go home,’ Bakker suggested. ‘You seem upset.’

  There was a roar from the square followed by frantic applause. Sinterklaas had appeared on his horse, surrounded by an army of Black Petes. Soon he’d be on the balcony and the crowd would go quiet for the ceremonial speeches.

  ‘There,’ the woman said. ‘There he is . . .’

  She was pointing at a green figure close by the entrance to one of the narrow side lanes, filled with tourist restaurants.

  With a short sigh Bakker turned to look, closely, the way she’d learned through working with Vos. He didn’t just see the world around him. The people in it. How they fitted into the narrow, sometimes chaotic streets of Amsterdam. He thought about them. Tried to imagine what brought these men and women here, and the story behind them.

  When she did that Bakker found she was interested in what she saw. The Black Pete was of medium height, blacked up, a large curly wig, green satin costume, mob cap, baggy trousers. He had a red sack that ought to be full of sweets to hand out to the kids. But he wasn’t doing that. It was as if the sack scarcely existed. He was looking round. Watching for something.

  This one didn’t have a rusty bike but he was wrong somehow.

  Vos and Van der Berg were still engaged with the drunk who looked ready to get punchy. Bakker told the woman and her daughter to stay with the uniform officer, then walked over to say hello.

  So many of these odd characters were around at that moment. There were even a couple abseiling down one of the buildings. Anyone who felt like getting the costume, handing out some sweets and having fun could lose themselves in the disguise.

  ‘There’s a woman who thinks you’re following her. I’m sure it’s just a mistake.’

  No response. Just two very white and angry eyes staring at her from beneath the shiny, curly wig.

  ‘Perhaps if you could show me some ID.’

  A grunt and then his gloved hands went beneath the loose elastic of the green trousers, fiddled around and came up with something she recognized straight away.

  It was the card for Koeman, another plain-clothes agent in Vos’s team.

  She looked him up and down and stifled a giggle. He folded his green arms and tapped his right foot on the pavement.

  ‘Is this work?’ she asked. ‘Or what you do off duty?’

  He was a miserable bastard at the best of times. It seemed a worthwhile question.

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘I don’t know. That’s why I asked.’

  He closed his eyes for a moment.

  ‘I’m street surveillance.’

  She pointed to the woman who’d complained. Renata Kuyper was jabbing a finger at the uniformed officer again.


  ‘Did you follow her all the way here from Herenmarkt?’

  ‘No,’ he said with a sarcastic whine. ‘Why would I do that?’

  ‘She says a Black Pete did. He was wearing green.’

  Koeman reached into his bag and glumly offered her a spicy kruidnoot.

  The cheesy music had stopped which meant they could hear Renata Kuyper yelling at the top of her voice alongside the rising clamour of the crowd. Bakker glanced up at the theatre balcony. Sinterklaas was there, along with the mayor, marching towards the microphone.

  Something was missing.

  The girl in the pink jacket.

  Bakker strode quickly back. Koeman followed.

  ‘Henk! Henk!’ she was screaming into her phone. ‘For God’s sake where are you? Get down here, will you? Saskia just wandered off . . .’

  She stopped, glared at Koeman.

  ‘He’s a duty police officer,’ Bakker explained.

  The female cop was getting irate.

  ‘Like we said. It’s Sinterklaas. Kids go missing. We’ll find her for you. Jesus. You don’t need to make such a fuss.’

  The woman was still on the phone screaming at what Bakker could only assume was voicemail.

  ‘We’ll find her . . .’ Bakker repeated.

  The racket had attracted Pieter Vos’s attention. He patted the drunk on the back and sent him off towards the exit then wandered over. Vos and Van der Berg seemed to recognize Koeman immediately. Perhaps he did this every year.

  Bakker looked at them, radios in hand, alert, ready.

  ‘We’ve got a missing girl. Pink jacket.’ She turned to the woman. ‘Name?’

  Renata Kuyper gave up on the phone.

  ‘Saskia Kuyper. She’s only eight.’

  Very like her mother, Bakker remembered. The same strained, narrow, pale face.

  Vos nodded, introduced himself, was starting to explain how they had officers trained to deal with lost children throughout the square. Every year plenty went missing. They were always found.

  Then Sinterklaas was at the microphone. Gruff, hearty tones booming throughout Leidseplein.