Angel in the Shadows Page 14

  Farah saw Aninda’s finger appear in front of her right eye, move towards the iris and touch the lens. She felt pressure, then the finger disappeared. The same action took place on the left.

  ‘You’re lucky, Valentina. They’re out.’

  She dropped some more fluid into Farah’s eyes before covering her face with a damp tea towel. ‘Stay seated like this for a while.’

  Farah was left alone in the dark with the towel over her face. The flashes of light became less frequent and the pain less searing, until it finally subsided altogether. As she regained her composure and her heart rate steadily slowed, she heard Aninda make a phone call.

  The tea towel was lifted from her face.

  ‘How many fingers?’ Aninda asked with a smile while making the V-sign.

  ‘Five,’ Farah joked. ‘But everything is still really blurry.’

  ‘It will get clearer. How about the pain?’

  ‘Much better.’

  ‘Good. All the other women made it home in one piece. That leaves just us.’

  She helped Farah up and together they left their place of refuge, a kitchen behind a shop full of sports shoes, T-shirts, tracksuit bottoms and hoodies. A man who looked like he’d never done a day’s exercise in his life pulled up the storefront shutter so Farah could walk out, unsteady on her feet, supported by Aninda.

  It had grown quiet in the street; eerily quiet. In the distance, Farah saw the night sky glow orange-red above the rooftops.

  ‘There are heavy clashes on Merdeka Square,’ Aninda said. ‘All the barricades have been set alight. The police are using live ammunition.’

  She stopped a bajaj, helped Farah into it and asked where she was going.

  Farah stared straight ahead, looking confused.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Aninda said. She got in, wrapped an arm around her and yelled an address, after which the young man behind the wheel set off. Farah rested her head on Aninda’s shoulder and closed her eyes. There was no room for suspicion. An unknown woman had stepped in to look after her as if they’d been lifelong friends. Any place she’d take her would be fine.

  Two hands stroked her face. She opened her eyes. The bajaj’s engine was idling. They’d come to a halt. Aninda was cradling Farah’s head. She was so close their noses almost touched. Farah realized she could see her clearly; the blurriness had gone. Aninda curled her lips into a disarming smile.

  ‘Blue. They’re incredibly blue.’

  Farah looked at her uncomprehendingly.

  ‘Your eyes, I mean.’

  Farah coughed hard to clear her throat. Aninda handed her a plastic bottle of water, which she gulped down, then paid the driver and helped Farah out. She found herself standing, still somewhat unsteady on her legs, in front of a large colonial warehouse with a white stucco façade.

  ‘This used to be a storage depot for furniture,’ Aninda said, as the bajaj drove off. ‘It had been empty for years. The foundation bought it.’

  ‘What foundation?’

  Aninda tugged at the narrow steel gate, which creaked into motion, and pointed to the text beneath the tree logo attached to the rusty bars. ‘Can you read what it says here?’

  ‘WARINGIN RUMAH UNTUK ANAK JALANAN,’ Farah read aloud. ‘Waringin Shelter for Homeless Children’.

  ‘All credit to the antacids,’ Aninda said, laughing, and, with an arm around Farah’s waist, ushered her through a long, narrow entranceway. The tiles, which were covered in a thin layer of water, glistened in the moonlight. ‘We keep as many children as we can off the streets. Some live here permanently. If we only enable them to go to school here and they return to the streets at the end of the day, they don’t retain much of what they’ve learned and we have no control over where they are or what they do. We don’t know whether they’ll sniff glue again, or let themselves be lured away by a tourist, or whatever. If we can keep them here, we can offer them a roof over their heads and a good meal.’

  Again, she gave Farah that disarming look.

  ‘And if we can give shelter to homeless children, we can certainly do the same for a lost angel, right?’

  At the end of the passage, they halted. Surrounded by high, solid walls, away from the noise, chaos and stench of the city, was a large courtyard. Within it several smaller buildings with pagoda-style roofs grouped around a twenty-metre-high gnarled tree with bark that looked like elephant skin.

  ‘A waringin, or weeping fig,’ Aninda whispered. ‘You’ll find one in nearly every Indonesian village. The aerial roots reach all the way to the ground. Village elders meet under its branches to discuss important matters. It’s a cycle that repeats itself generation after generation.’

  Farah barely heard what she was saying. It felt as if she’d travelled back thirty years in time, back to the walled garden in what had once been her parental home in Wazir Akbar Khan, Kabul’s well-to-do neighbourhood. As if all she needed to do now was to wait for her father to emerge in his pristine white shirt and linen trousers, so they could do Pencak Silat exercises together while he counted out loud in this language she’d recently started learning from a well-thumbed book, ‘Satu, dua, tiga …’

  Given the chance, she could have stood there all night, but Aninda led her down the deserted gallery adjacent to the courtyard. ‘We have to be quiet. The children are all asleep.’

  She stopped in front of the final door.

  ‘Would you mind waiting here a moment?’ She kicked off her slippers and went inside.

  A bamboo rollerblind was pulled down. A lamp was lit. A fan began to whirr. Farah could hear clattering. A moment later the old door swung open again.

  ‘Welcome,’ Aninda said shyly.

  Farah took off her trainers. As she brushed past Aninda, she could smell the young woman’s body – a combination of perspiration, sandalwood and lime.

  An ancient upright fan was working feverishly, but the heat of the day still pervaded the spacious room with its wide, worn, wooden floorboards. It must have been at least thirty-five degrees inside. Hardly any furniture: a stack of cushions, a large wooden table on trestles, a dozen upturned crates serving as bookcases and an old racing bike leaning against a wall covered in children’s drawings.

  Aninda came and stood close beside her.

  ‘I supervise the children here. They made those drawings for me after I taught them the song of the little star. It’s about how it feels to dance and fly like a star and shine in the sky along with all the other stars.’

  Softly and delicately, almost under her breath, she sang the first line, ‘Bintang kecil, Di langit yang tinggi, Amat banyak, Menghias angkasa …’ Then her voice faltered and she stopped. ‘Homeless kids sleep under the stars. They see them every night. Those stars are just as remote to them as the lives of the people who pass them by every day in their air-conditioned cars.’

  Silent and numb with fatigue, Farah gazed at the drawings of figures that appeared to be floating in a paper sky. She thought of Sekandar and turned to Aninda.

  ‘Terimah kasih.’ ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘Thank you for looking after me. I’m sorry I made things difficult for you.’

  Aninda put her hand on Farah’s upper arm. ‘I’m not sorry at all. I’m glad I met you.’

  Farah looked at the thick mattress. It was lying on top of a pallet, but, thanks to a wide, flared-out mosquito net, it looked as elegant as a four-poster bed.

  It was her final conscious image.

  Then her mind went blank for a long time.

  4

  At the junction of De Nieuwe Meer, Radjen exited the A10 motorway and took the A4 in the direction of The Hague. The wind blew in his face. His thoughts were clear. A half-hour ago he’d been hanging over a sink, dizzy, cold water splashing over his head, with Esther right behind him. Now she was sitting beside him in the Corolla.

  ‘Ever heard of Midnight Ninja?’ he asked.

  ‘Sounds like a tacky Kung Fu film,’ Esther laughed.

  �
�A computer game in which ninjas are tasked with freeing a princess or capturing a treasure, going about their business like shadows in the night.’

  ‘Nimble warriors trying to rescue a helpless woman sounds even tackier.’ She put two cigarettes in her mouth and lit both.

  ‘You can play the game at higher and higher levels,’ Radjen continued. ‘And with each new level the risks you take increase. The way it’s put together is ingenious.’

  Esther inhaled deeply, turned and handed him a lit cigarette.

  ‘Is this your coming out, Chief? You’re secretly a computer-game junkie?’

  He accepted the cigarette with a grin, enjoyed the smoke filling his lungs and let it out with a long sigh.

  ‘No, just trying to make a comparison.’

  ‘With what?’

  ‘With everything we’re now dealing with. We’ve reached the highest level.’

  ‘Because of the possible involvement of a minister?’

  ‘Exactly. We started at the bottom level. The shooting at the villa; the corpses in the burnt-out car. Flunkies, anonymous pawns. A step higher: we find Thomas Meijer and Sekandar, the driver and the injured boy. Perpetrator and victim. Cogs in a much larger machine.’ He turned up the air-con and the cigarette smoke drifted towards the back seat.

  ‘Then we go a step further, arriving at the next level, with the possible involvement of the businessman Armin Lazonder. The night-time shooting happened at a location that belongs to him. Another step further and we have the doctor, who wanted to expose the whole thing to the public. She was the next victim. On all these different levels, a number of individuals involved are connected to Lombard. We’ve arrived at the ministerial level. That’s about as high as it gets.’

  The Hague appeared in the distance. Towering ministries with their pillared brick and granite façades loomed over the monumental buildings of the city centre.

  ‘What I’m about to tell you stays between us, okay?’

  She nodded.

  ‘I’m convinced we’re never going to get to the bottom of this with an official investigation. Big Brother is keeping a close watch on the MIT. We unexpectedly raid the work quarters of a minister, we find child pornography on his computer, and shortly afterwards it seems to have been removed without a trace of foul play. We follow a lead to Nationwide Forensics and before we make contact the place is blown to smithereens.’

  ‘They’re always one step ahead of us …’

  ‘That’s why I want to form a shadow team. A trusted group that can operate quickly and quietly without immediately attracting attention from above.’

  ‘Who did you have in mind?’

  He paused and looked at her. ‘Just you and me …’

  He merged left in the direction of Voorburg and Leidschendam, and exited on to Laan van Nieuw Oost-Indië. There he turned on to Bezuidenhoutseweg.

  ‘I’ve watched you over the years and I’m … I have faith in you. I’m convinced that you’re ideal for the task at hand.’

  They drove passed the Ministry of Economic Affairs but couldn’t find a parking space. In one of the streets behind the huge building, Radjen found a spot right in front of a café. They went inside and he ordered himself a double espresso, a glass of water and a club sandwich. Esther ordered the grilled cheese with fries and a sparkling water.

  On a small round table on the wide pavement in front of the eatery, they hastily wolfed it all down. They only had fifteen minutes before their appointment with Minister Lombard.

  ‘Well?’ asked Radjen after a few big bites.

  ‘Well what?’

  ‘What do you think?’

  She pulled out a packet of Gauloises, lit a cigarette and exhaled away from him.

  ‘Something bothers me.’

  ‘Let’s hear it.’

  ‘I’m honoured. I mean, it’s not every day that I’m promoted to the order of the secret ninja. But, if I agree, does it mean I’m doing something illegal?’

  ‘According to the letter of the law, yes.’

  He could see her tense up; her gnawing doubts.

  ‘That’s the crux, Chief. I became a detective because I believe in the law.’

  She looked at him in silence. Seriously. Without a hint of a smile, neither mocking nor inviting, nothing. He hadn’t expected this reaction from her, but respected her more than ever because of her conviction. Esther had a tough exterior, but it didn’t mean she could be corrupted. She believed in what she was doing, even more than he’d imagined. And now he’d asked her to do something that would probably never have occurred to her, and that was apparently the opposite of everything she held dear.

  ‘Sometimes the law falls short,’ Radjen said. ‘Let’s not forget we’re facing an unknown ring of individuals with a personal stake in Lombard, people who think they’re above the law and who see the death of innocent people as nothing more than collateral damage.’

  He paused and gulped back his espresso. ‘As far as I’m concerned, they crossed a line by killing two innocent bystanders in the Nationwide Forensics bombing. Call it the boundary of what is moral, what is acceptable, call it whatever you like. But what I want while I’m on this case, damn, what I want while I’m serving the people, is no more unnecessary deaths. No innocent casualties. I want …’

  He faltered as she unexpectedly stood up and restlessly threw her long hair over her shoulder.

  ‘Justice. I get it, Chief. I need some time to think about this, okay?’

  She threw her cigarette butt on the pavement and stamped it out with a twisting motion of her right boot heel.

  In the glass-domed hall of the Ministry of Economic Affairs, they were not only met by three bronze nude figures on pedestals but also by Minister Lombard’s secretary. She was a stocky woman in chunky heels, who had undoubtedly seen everything there was to see at the ministry, and wasn’t flustered by anything. Certainly not by a tall detective strutting the halls with his female colleague as if the building belonged to them.

  When they reached his office, Lombard greeted them with what appeared to be a welcoming smile. But Radjen estimated it was actually a smile meant to keep an opponent at arm’s length. A smile that weakened any kind of resistance from the other with the first handshake. The kind of smile that was deployed whenever needed, but that said nothing about his real intent, and everything about his cunning nature. His dark-brown eyes were tender, displaying a hint of melancholy. Yet Radjen now also saw something menacing hidden deep within, as if someone else were secretly watching from the shadows, where it smelled like a musty kind of loneliness.

  Lombard’s office in the ministry had obvious similarities to his pied-à-terre on the fortieth floor of the Kroontoren in The Hague, which Radjen had searched while Lombard was in Moscow. The walls were a crisp shade of white, the blinds looked like stylish draperies, and sleek silver desk lamps and bright red armchairs dominated the room. But, instead of the rather clichéd Cubist art that had adorned Lombard’s walls in the Kroontoren, Radjen now saw enlargements of the same black-and-white photos he’d viewed earlier on Lombard’s computer with the guy from the NFI. The images depicting the youthful sensuality of half-naked girls that had completely thrown him.

  The photos were an obvious provocation, and at the same time evidence of Lombard’s superiority. Here was a man who apparently had nothing to hide from the outside world. And that’s exactly how he behaved.

  ‘If I were to tell you,’ Lombard said, standing too close and encroaching on Radjen’s personal space, ‘that I receive national and international colleagues here, diplomats and even heads of state, with these photos brazenly displayed on the wall, right beside this distinguished portrait of our Queen, while these very same pictures on my computer have been branded “suspect”, well, then you can imagine that I find this rather puzzling, as would the average Dutch citizen.’

  ‘Our focus, sir, is investigation,’ Radjen said. ‘Not riddles.’

  ‘Good: that increases my confidence in the Dutch
police,’ Lombard said as he broadly gestured in the direction of three comfortable armchairs positioned in a semicircle around his desk. ‘Have a seat.’

  Radjen wasn’t at all surprised that Lombard’s lawyer was present. A man trying to enhance his bloated face and greying hair with stylish horn-rimmed glasses. When he introduced himself as Weisman, Radjen had to laugh: what’s in a name, he thought to himself.

  ‘As you know, my client has no direct involvement in the case,’ Weisman said. ‘Given the nature of his duties, I must request that you keep your questions short and take up as little of his time as possible.’

  ‘I’m expected in Parliament in fifteen minutes,’ Lombard added. He was now the only one of the group still standing. Lombard was an overweight man, but he carried it well, given how tall he was: almost two metres, just slightly taller than Radjen.

  ‘Then Parliament will have to wait,’ Esther replied. ‘As my colleague said, sir, this is an ongoing investigation. As a suspect in this case, of course, you’re under no obligation to answer.’

  Lombard wasn’t fazed by her reply. He even looked amused. ‘National interest versus the suicide of a chauffeur. A rather interesting dilemma, young lady.’

  ‘We have good reason to believe that Mr Meijer’s death wasn’t a suicide,’ Radjen said.

  Lombard’s face tightened.

  ‘In the light of these new developments, we’re looking into all aspects of the case again. That means that we’re also questioning everyone involved again.’

  ‘The point is,’ Lombard said, taking a seat in his large desk chair, ‘that the contact between Mr Meijer and myself was strictly limited to business. He was my driver. He took me from a to b. I find it hard to conceive what more I could add to this.’

  ‘There’s a lot more,’ Esther replied. ‘Even your remark that after years of working with him your relationship with Mr Meijer was strictly business raises questions in my mind.’

  ‘That may be so, young lady, but you’re making a serious mistake. Mr Meijer and I did not work together.’

  ‘He was your chauffeur, right?’