Nothing.
I drove on.
5
An hour and a half later, I was flapping more with every passing minute. I kept telling myself she was a switched-on girl. She knew how to handle herself. She’d dealt with the Russians. But that meant fuck-all. I wanted to find her. I
For the last thirty minutes I’d been parked up by the market, as close as I could get to the stretch of dual carriageway that ran between the small roundabout and the big one - the last known location I had for the Lexus.
Last light was in twenty minutes. After that, I’d go back to the RV, the hotel, and hope that she’d turn up.
I was on the far side of the bay. North-west of here was the canal that connected it with the North Sea and the commercial waterways of Europe. That was why Amsterdam was a hub for trafficking drugs and women.
I was tucked into a line of vehicles. Kids on mopeds screamed up and down, helmets perched on the top of their heads and leaning so far back they could have been auditioning for
A crimson shape came into view, heading towards the small roundabout. It was definitely a Lexus. I wanted to start the engine and be ready to roll but had to wait until it had gone past and committed to an exit. Everything had to look normal. He mustn’t see me reacting. I guessed he was going to take the third option, towards the larger roundabout, and then right, back through the tunnel.
I couldn’t see anything or anyone through the windows as it passed. It surprised me by taking the second left, into the housing estate by the market.
I followed, engine screaming. No way was I going to lose this fucker now, until I knew if she was inside. If she wasn’t, I would have to take action with the bald head and his mates, and get them to tell me where she was. Fuck finding Lilian. That could wait.
The road widened. Some of the shops already had their lights on. The Lexus’s brake lights glowed. It looked like he was about to pull over. I slowed, ready to abandon the car at the kerb if they got out and walked.
He wasn’t pulling over. He was making a turn. He swung the vehicle right round until he faced me head on.
I was going to have to let him pass before I reacted.
I pulled up outside a kebab shop next to a rank of clappedout taxis. Lads leant against the bonnets, smoking and chatting, wrapped up against the cold. The Lexus had stopped. The rear door opened and I caught a glimpse of her jeans as she got out. The passenger window came down. I pulled out my BlackBerry and started driving. I went past slowly, the phone to my ear, trying to make it look like I was chatting away to someone as I tried to get a clear shot of Anna’s new best mate.
She finished her exchange with the bald guy and crossed the road towards the taxi rank. I stopped to let her past as he powered up his window and drove off.
I dropped the BlackBerry into my lap and carried on for a couple of hundred metres before swinging round by a dark-grey stone building. It looked like an old government institution, maybe a library or a theatre. Its big glass windows were filled with posters in Arabic. It must have been a mosque of sorts. Shoes were stacked on racks outside a side entrance.
Anna was talking to the driver of the taxi at the head of the queue. She saw me, gave the guy a thanks-but- no-thanks, and turned to walk down one of the side streets. I followed and pulled up alongside her. She looked around and jumped in. The expression on her face said she was ready for her bollocking.
‘What the fuck are you doing? I told you, didn’t I? Anything spooks you, get up and walk. Didn’t I say don’t take any chances?’
She listened to me as she fastened her seatbelt. ‘Nick, watch the road. I’ve found Lilian.’
‘Alive?’
‘I think it’s her. There were twelve girls, some of them fresh off the plane. I can show you. Go back to the roundabout.’ She lowered her window and lit a cigarette.
She took a drag. ‘It was dark. But there’s one who could definitely be her.’
‘What about Baldilocks - you get his name? Anything?’
She shook her head. ‘He’s a Brit, but he doesn’t sound like you. He’s like the one in Christiania. The one who gave us the address.’
‘A Scouser?’
‘I don’t know what that means. But he sounded the same.’ She took another drag. As we turned onto the roundabout I let down my window too.
‘Take the second exit - follow the signs for the docks.’
I checked the blue plate high up on the first building past the roundabout. The street was called Distelweg.
‘Follow the road. It twists and turns through this housing estate, and then you cross a canal. After that, it’s a dead straight line down the centre of the docks.’ She turned her head to blow out another cloud of smoke. ‘I told him I’d buy the lot, thinking that maybe I could get them all out quickly. We could find the money, couldn’t we, Nicholas? Five thousand euros. Five thousand each. They’re young …’
‘Brilliant. When do we have to deliver the cash?’
‘We don’t.’ She sighed. ‘Turns out they’ve already been sold and are due to leave this Thursday. He just wanted to show me how fresh his merchandise is.’
As we drove over the bridge and into almost total darkness I had the same feeling I’d had at the Bender border crossing into Transnistria - like I was crossing into East Berlin. In my rear-view, the canal shimmered under the street-lights. We passed four or five ropy-looking boathouses. Just forty metres later the world was pitch black.
Anna tossed out her cigarette and climbed into the back without being told. She crouched in the foot-well as I turned onto the dead straight tarmac road that bisected the dock. Potholes lined the verge where it surrendered to the mud, and stacks of wooden pallets sat outside a parade of industrial units. Watery pools of security lighting surrounded a similar group of buildings in the distance. A few trucks and vans were parked up here and there, but there was no sign of life. This wasn’t a 24/7 part of town.
All signs of habitation petered out about four hundred metres further on and were replaced by a run of steel railings. To reinforce the Checkpoint Charlie experience, it started to rain.
Anna rested her head on the baby seat. ‘OK - now we’re at the wasteground. The place I was taken is on its own, set back from the road. There’s a tower on the left-hand side.’
The Noord 5 area was on the far side of the water. Piles of rubble and twisted steel reinforcing rods glistened in its ambient light.
We passed a double gate secured with a shiny new padlock and chain.
‘That’s where we drove in.’
Droplets of rain bounced through the open window and onto my cheek. I studied the dark silhouette of the target: an imposing rectangular structure with a tower at the left end. I couldn’t see a single light.
‘I think it’s a grain silo - or, at least, it used to be. There was flour over everything. It smells like a cake shop when you go in.’
I carried on for another hundred metres or so, to a point where the road turned sharp left and then almost wound back on itself. We passed a ferry point, not much more than a slipway, too small for vehicles, just for pedestrians and cyclists. I drove back towards what I hoped was the Berlin Wall canal. With luck we’d be able to cross it and get back onto Distelweg via the estate.
The bay was immediately to my right. On the other side of it was the Amsterdam I remembered. Spires were silhouetted in the neon glow. Navigation lights glided up and down the waterway between us as tonight’s
