Yanus is in the doorway. He reaches into his jacket again. I can see his shadow lengthening on the floor. I turn to face him. He has a can of beans in his fist. He swings it, a short arc from the hip. I sense it coming but have no time to react. The blow sends me spinning across the room. One side of my head is on fire.
Samira screams. Not so much a scream as a strangled cry.
Yanus is coming for me again. I can taste blood. One side of my face is already beginning to swell. He hits me, using the can like a hammer. A knife flashes in his right hand.
His eyes are fixed on mine with ecstatic intensity. This is his calling—inflicting pain. The blade twirls in front of me doing figure eights. I was supposed to take him by surprise. The opposite happened. I underestimated him.
Another blow connects. Metal on bone. The room begins to blur.
Some things, real things, seem to happen half in the mind and half in the world; trapped in between. The mind sees them first, like now—a boot swings toward me. I glimpse Zala hanging back. She wants to look away but can’t drag her gaze from me. The boot connects and I see a blaze of color.
Fishing roughly in my pockets, Yanus takes out my mobile, my passport, a bundle of Euros…
“Who are you?”
“I’m a nurse.”
“Leugenaar!”
He holds the knife against my neck. The point pricks my skin. A ruby teardrop is caught on the tip of the blade.
Zala moves toward him. I yell at her to stop. She can’t hear me. Yanus swats her away, with the can of beans. Zala drops and holds her face. He curses. I hope he broke his fingers.
My left eye is closing and blood drips from my ear, warming my neck. He forces me upright, pulling my arms back and looping plastic cuffs around my wrists. The ratchets pull them tighter, pinching my skin.
He opens my passport. Reads the name.
“Politieagent! How did you find this place?” He spits toward Zala. “
“If you leave us alone I won’t say anything. You can walk out of here.”
Yanus finds this amusing. The point of his knife traces across my eyebrow.
“My partner knows I’m here. He’s coming. He’ll bring others. If you leave now you can get away.”
“What are you doing here?”
“Looking for Samira.”
He speaks to Samira in Dutch. She begins gathering her things. A few clothes, the photograph of her family…
“Wait for me outside,” he tells her.
“Zala.”
“Outside.”
“Zala,” she says again, more determined.
He waves the knife in her face. She doesn’t flinch. She is like a statue. Immovable. She’s not leaving without her friend.
The door suddenly blasts inward as if blown from its hinges. Ruiz fills the frame. Sometimes I forget how big he can make himself.
Yanus barely flinches. He turns, knife first. Here is a fresh challenge. The night holds such promise for him. Ruiz takes in the scene and settles on Yanus, matching his intensity.
But I can see the future. Yanus is going to take Ruiz apart. Kill him slowly. The knife is like an extension of him, a conductor’s baton directing an invisible orchestra. Listening to voices.
The DI has something in his hand. A half brick. It’s not enough. Yanus braces his legs apart and raises a hand, curling a finger to motion him onward.
Ruiz swings his fist, creating a disturbance in the air. Yanus feints to the left. The half brick comes down and misses. Yanus grins. “You’re too slow, old man.”
The blade is alive. I scarcely see it move. A dark stain blossoms on Ruiz’s shirtsleeve, but he continues stepping forward, forcing Yanus to retreat.
“Can you walk, Alisha?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Get up and get out.”
“Not without you, sir.”
“Please, for once in your life—”
“I’ll kill you both,” says Yanus.
My hands are bound behind me. I can’t do anything. The acid sting of nausea rises in my throat. Samira goes ahead of me, stepping into the corridor. Zala follows, still holding her cheek. Yanus yells to her in Dutch, threateningly. He lunges at Ruiz who dodges the blade. I turn outside the door and run toward the stairs, waiting for the sound of a body falling.
On every landing I shoulder the locked doors, banging my head against them and yelling for help. I want someone to untie my hands, to call the police, to give me a weapon. Nobody answers. Nobody wants to know.
We reach the ground floor and the street, turning right and heading for the canal. Samira and Zala are ahead of me. What a strange trio we make hustling through the darkness. We reach the corner. I turn to Samira. “I have to help him.” She understands. “I want you to go straight to the police.”
She shakes her head. “They’ll send me back.”
I haven’t time to argue. “Then go to the nuns. Quickly. Zala knows the way.”
I can feel the adrenaline still pumping through my body. Running now, aware of the void in my stomach, I sprint toward the house. There are people milling outside. They’re surrounding a figure slumped on the steps. Ruiz. Someone has given him a cigarette. He sucks it greedily, drawing in his cheeks and then exhaling slowly.
Relief flows through me like liquid beneath my skin. I don’t know whether to weep or laugh or do both. Blood soaks his shirt. A fist is pressed against his chest.
“I think maybe you should take me to a hospital,” he says, struggling to breathe.
Like a crazy woman, I begin yelling at people to call an ambulance. A teenager summons the courage to tell me there’s one coming.
“I had to get close,” Ruiz explains in a hoarse whisper. His brow and upper lip are dotted with beads of sweat. “I had to let him stab me. If he could reach me I could
“Don’t talk. Just be still.”
“I hope I killed the bastard.”
More people emerge from the flats. They want to come and see the bleeding man. Someone cuts away my cuffs and the plastic curls like orange peel at my feet.
Ruiz gazes at the night sky above the rooftops.
“My ex-wives have been wishing this on me for a long while,” he says.
“That’s not true. Miranda is still in love with you.”
“How do you know?”
“I can see it. She flirts with you all the time.”
“She can’t help herself. She flirts with everyone. She does it to be nice.”
His breathing is labored. Blood gurgles in his lungs.
“Wanna hear a joke?” he says.
“Don’t talk. Sit quietly.”
“It’s an old one. I like the old ones. It’s about a bear. I like bears. Bears can be funny.”
He’s not going to stop.
“There’s this family of polar bears living in the Arctic in the middle of winter. The baby polar bear goes to his mother one day and says, ‘Mum? Am I really a
“‘Of course you are, son,’ she says.
“And the cub replies, ‘Are you sure I’m not a panda bear or a black bear?’
“‘No, you’re definitely not. Now run outside and play in the snow.’
“But he’s still confused so the baby polar bear goes looking for his father and finds him fishing at the ice hole.
