Afterwards, she rang Viljam. Certain for a moment that everything was as it should be, that her sister had come back.
She had not come back.
– She’s been missing for almost forty-eight hours.
– What is everyone doing? Liss wailed. – The police?
– They’ve put out a missing persons report. They’ve been here a couple of times. And I’ve been down to talk to the crime response unit. They keep on and on asking if we had a quarrel and all that kind of stuff. If she was depressed and had talked about killing herself.
– Mailin kill herself?
– None of us believe anything like that.
– But somebody has to do something!
– It doesn’t look as if they have any leads to go on. Tage and I went to the cabin at Morr Water. The police have been out there too. That’s all I know.
Liss stood looking down on Haarlemmerdijk. The café owner on the other side was hanging a Christmas decoration above the entrance. – Someone has to do something, she repeated. Said it aloud. Stood there without moving. Remembered just then about the telephone number.
She reached an answering service, a woman’s voice speaking in Dutch and then English: This is Judith van Raven’s telephone, please leave a message…
She showered. Dressed. Put on her make-up. Everything she normally did. Ran down the stairs and let herself out, cut across the street and into the café. From the top of a rickety stepladder the owner beamed at her. He looked to be somewhere in his fifties, with a pink dome framed by a pretzel-shaped rim of grey curls. The steps were up on a table, and a ghostly blonde wearing black was holding them while he hung gold and silver balls from the ceiling. There was music coming from behind the bar. It’s gonna be a cold, cold Christmas.
She ordered a double espresso and sat by the window. By the time it was finished, she had made up her mind. Ring Zako. Meet him one last time. Ask him straight out if he knew that Mailin was missing. She’d be able to tell if he was lying to her.
She called his number. It rang four times, five times. A deep male voice answered.
– Is Zako there?
– Who’s calling? the voice asked.
She hesitated before saying: – A friend.
– A friend? What is your business with him?
– I asked to speak to Zako, she exclaimed. – Is he there?
– Zako is dead.
She almost dropped her phone. – Don’t mess me about. Who the hell are you?
– Detective Inspector Wouters. Will you please answer the question I asked you?
She couldn’t remember what he had asked her. Out in Haarlemmerdijk the lights were being turned on. The six-pointed star with the red heart inside. A cyclist went by. A man with a child on a seat in front of him.
The voice on the phone: – When was the last time you saw Zako?
From very far away she heard her own answer: – A few days ago. Maybe a week.
There were more questions. About her relationship to him. About the drugs he used. If they had taken drugs together. She had to provide her full name and address. Tell him what she did in Amsterdam.
– We may need you to come in for a further talk with us.
– Of course, she muttered. – I’ll come in.
Afterwards she sat and stared at her phone. The skin around her mouth prickled. The sensation spread up into her cheeks.
The proprietor of the café had hung up all his balls and surrounded them with green garlands. He tottered down the rickety stepladder, gave her a smile. – There now. Now Christmas can come.
From the bar came the sound of John Lennon’s voice: War is over, if you want it. She felt her nose running. Fumbled out a handkerchief. When she took it away, it was full of blood. She pressed it to her nose again, hurried to the toilet.
– Everything all right? the proprietor asked as she passed him.
She locked the door. Held the handkerchief under the ice-cold water, used it to press her nostrils together. The diluted blood ran down over her chin and dripped on to the white porcelain.
Back at her table, she called Rikke. Rikke answered, but couldn’t get a word out.
– It’s not true, is it? Liss wailed. – Please tell me it isn’t true.
Rikke ended the call.
A few minutes later she called back.
– They found him this morning… two of his cousins… On the sofa… choked on his own vomit.
Then she was gone again. Liss pushed a note under her coffee cup and struggled out into the street.
The picture appeared again as she hurried along through the streets of Jordaan: disappear into the forest, down to the spot by the marsh, between the pines, a place only she, not even Mailin, knew about. For as long as she could remember she had thought of it as the last place, and it always used to calm her down to think of it. Nothing could calm her down now.
At Haarlemmerplein she hailed a taxi. Huddled up in the back seat. The driver was shaven headed and wearing a grey suit, reeked of a type of aftershave Zako sometimes used. She grabbed the door handle to get out again.
– Where does the young lady want taking to?
She slumped back. Thought she’d told him where she was going.
– Schiphol, she murmured, and pulled the thin leather jacket around herself.
The taxi driver turned again, winked at her in the mirror. – Travelling light, he observed as he offered her a cigarette.
AS I WRITE this, I think of all the things I would have said to you, dear Liss, if only you had let me tell you. Everything that happened that spring.And how I got through that summer, how I found myself on Crete in the autumn, under a different sun, but with the same black light shining inside me. Among people gorging themselves, drinking, coupling. They argued and vomited and left the kids to look after themselves. That’s where I got to know Jo. In the evening I sat and read on the terrace outside the restaurant, the same poem over and over again, by the light of a candle. It’s about the end time, I think, or at least it felt to me as though it was about my end time; roaming through a waste land, no water, no meaning, blindness, emptiness, death. What are you reading? Jo asked when he came up to me. He was suspicious, as he no doubt was of everyone he met; what he needed more than anyone else was someone he could trust. I told him about the poem, recited the section called ‘Death by Water’, told him about the image of the dead Phoenician at the bottom of the sea.
Jo was twelve years old and left completely on his own. He knew what I felt like.
PART II
1
Sunday 14 December
AS THE PLANE began its descent and the captain announced that they were approaching Oslo airport, Liss woke in the midst of an avalanche of thoughts. Two of them remained with her. Mailin is missing. I must find Mailin.
Sunday afternoon. Just after four. She’d spent the night on a bench at Schiphol, hadn’t managed to find a seat on a plane until morning. Almost twenty-four hours had passed since she’d sat in the café in Haarlemmerdijk. Wouters was the name of the policeman who’d answered when she called Zako’s number. Could one ever forget such a name? It isn’t true that I last saw Zako a week ago. I was there that night. Just before he died… Enclose those thoughts in a room. Lock it. The name Wouters on a sign on the door. Not to be opened. Will it ever be possible to forget that there is something inside that room? Start with the name, Wouters, forget the policeman’s name. Forget his voice, and what he told her. Then it might also be possible to forget where she was on Saturday night. I must find Mailin. I don’t care a damn about anything else.