– Tomorrow you be here clean and focused, he called after her as she disappeared out the door.
The December day was filled to the brim with a cold damp that gusted along Lijnbaansgracht and froze around her, layer upon layer of floating ice. The roads were slippery, but she cycled alongside the canal as fast as she could. A woman wearing a coat and a broad-brimmed hat who stood smoking by the railing of one of the houseboats turned and waved as she rode by. She pedalled harder. Two old men were fishing from a canal bridge. One was wearing a flat hat; he spat in the water. Suddenly she stopped. Leaned the cycle up against the railings and pulled out her phone.
– It’s me. Liss.
A sound at the other end. At first she didn’t understand what it was.
Her mother was crying. Liss had never heard her crying before. She could disconnect now. Knew all she needed to know. That something had happened to Mailin. That something had changed, that things would never be the same again. And deep down, inside all the haziness she didn’t dare to touch, something like relief.
– How long has she been missing? she heard herself ask.
From the disjointed answer she gathered that it was almost twenty-four hours. That fitted with what Mailin’s partner had said.
– What are we going to do, Liss?
Her mother never asked questions like that. At least she never asked her. She was the one who answered them. Told people what was to be done. Always clear headed. Always a step ahead, prepared down to the last detail. Now here she was not even able to speak properly, just repeating the same words over and over again, what are we going to do? what are we going to do?
– I’ll call you later, Liss said, and ended the conversation. It hadn’t been a conversation, but a hole opening up in broad daylight.
She came back to her senses at the sound of a car horn tooting. She cycled along Marnixstraat, the traffic denser now. It was colder; her breath billowed out in a frosty cloud in front of her. She dived into it, out again.
Passing a Jamin shop, she stopped and went in. Avoid speaking to anyone, just get what she needed. No thoughts, following a pattern she had worked out but not used for a while. Bought ice cream. A litre and a half. Pure vanilla. No bits of nut or chocolate. Grabbed a Pepsi Max and a plastic spoon. It was getting dark. She’d been riding round. Been to Vondelpark. Didn’t know what had become of the day. Knew only that it was the end of something. And the start of something else. She bowled along Marnixkade with the Pepsi and the ice cream in a bag. Suddenly she found herself by the flat she had shared with Rikke. An obscure notion to go up and see her, get her to find Zako and trick him into saying what had happened. Find out if he knew anything about Mailin going missing. But Rikke wouldn’t be able to manage a job like that.
She passed the asphalt playground where some boys were playing basketball in the dark. They shouted out to her. How about a ride, then? She carried on out to the point, to the little park with the bench, sank down beneath the pale light of the lamp. She’d sat there many times before. The bench was coated with a layer of ice. The cold seeped up from the ground and into her back. It helped, to be freezing. The frost slowed down her thoughts. She could focus on the metallic jangling that reached her ears every time a car rattled across the joint on the bridge on the far side of the canal. She could let her gaze follow the distant trains that passed on their way to and from Centraal Station.
The picture came again. Mailin in the pale blue pyjamas. She turns and locks the door. Creeping into bed, putting her arms around her. There’s a sound too, it’s part of the picture. Footsteps stopping outside. The latch on the door moving. Knocking that gets louder and louder, becomes beating, and Mailin holding her close and tight. Nothing bad will ever, ever happen to you, Liss.
Abruptly she pulled the box out of the bag, broke open the lid. The ice cream was so hard the spoon snapped. She hacked away at it with the handle, gobbled down the pieces that she worked loose. The cold spread to her stomach too. She got out her lighter and moved it back and forth under the base. Soon she was able to dig out larger chunks of the vanilla-sweet mass. Hungry even as she was eating. It only took a few minutes to get the whole lot down. She squeezed the sides of the empty carton and squashed it into a rubbish bin on the other side of the gravel path. Ducked into the bushes and emptied herself. The taste of vanilla as it ran out of her was still just as strong. She couldn’t vacate herself completely; the remains of something were still down in her stomach somewhere, something she was unable to get up. She rested a while with her forehead against a tree. Maybe it was an oak; the bark was full of sharp ridges she could press herself against.
Her thoughts no longer whirled around in disarray. They began to gather. Separable, one from the next. Mailin gone. Find Mailin, before it’s too late. Zako got someone to take that photo of her… Liss stood up again. Knew what she had to do. She was still freezing. The cold streaming from her stomach kept her thinking calm. She cycled back along Lijnbaansgracht. It had to be past midnight. Houseboat windows all in darkness. A few swans drifting on the black canal.
Dark in his kitchen window too, the one facing Bloemstraat. She could ring him, or send a text message. Decided to wait. Positioned herself in a doorway on the other side. Even colder now. She needed this cold. The thought of Mailin being missing kept slipping away from her. Only the imprint of it remained. Her mother’s voice breaking up. She, Liss, was the one who should have gone missing. Anything could happen to her. The ground beneath her feet was always on the point of giving way. She lived in places where people disappeared. They ran off, or they gave up. If someone had called Mother and told her that her daughter Liss had disappeared it would have grieved her, but the grief would not have been unexpected. She was already half mourned. If something happened to Mailin, it would tear her apart.
An hour, perhaps more, had passed when she heard a motorcycle turn up from the bridge at Prinsengracht. A few seconds later he pulled up outside the entrance. He was alone. She resisted the impulse to race across the street and grab hold of his jacket. Waited till he’d gone in. Waited till the kitchen light went on. Waited a while longer, and then called him.
– What do you want? he asked, not even offering a greeting.
– Was just in the neighbourhood. On my way home. Thought I’d call in.
Zako grunted and ended the call. Two and a half minutes later, she rang the bell. He let her in. The fourth-floor door was ajar. The hallway smelt as though it had been freshly washed. He always got girls to come and clean up for him and never paid them a cent.
She stopped in the middle of the room. He was sitting on the sofa with a can of Amstel in his hand, looked up from the screen where a bunch of footballers were running round yelling at each other. Without waiting to be asked, she sat down. He didn’t bother asking what she was doing in his place. Had obviously taken it for granted that she would show up again.
– I’ve come here because there’s something I need you to tell me. Two weeks ago you showed me that picture, at the Café Alto. Of my sister.
He leaned back in the sofa, put his feet on the table. Finally he turned his gaze to her. The small lips twitched, as though suppressing a smile.
– Your sister, he repeated up into the air.
She might have run out to the kitchen, grabbed a breadknife, held it to his throat, threatened it out of him. She forced herself back to her calmness, the calmness that came from the cold still occupying her empty stomach. Don’t let him get the upper hand now. If Zako gets the upper hand, he’ll never let you go again.