As Mann left the hotel the icy wind hit him full in the face. He pulled the collar of his navy cashmere coat up around his neck and he dug his hands into his pockets as the bitter chill made his eyes water. It had been a long time since he was this cold—probably not since he ran around a freezing rugby field in England when he was at school. He had left behind a beautiful thirty-degree day in Hong Kong to come to windchill factor six below in Amsterdam. Spring looked like coming late to the tulip fields that year.
There was a lull on the streets as the rush to work was over and the tourists were not yet out in force. Mann cut a smart figure striding athletically across the cobbles, his eyes always fixed on the horizon. In the melting pot of Amsterdam society his Eurasian ethnicity, his mix of Chinese and English, didn’t look out of place, though his tanned face stuck out amongst the pasty look of people emerging from a European winter.
The place he was looking for was situated on a side street in a five-storey merchant house that had once
been a beautiful eighteenth-century building and was now carved up into at least thirty companies. Mann found the right intercom. He pressed the buzzer. There was a loud click as the heavy door lock was released and he was buzzed up. Standing in the hallway, he looked at the board of company names in the hall. NAP was on the second floor.
There was the sound of clacking keyboards and muted telephone conversations as he emerged onto the second floor. NAP was one of three companies that had their offices there. The NAP office door was open. There were six desks that Mann could see, laid out in a herringbone fashion behind a long, modern, wood and chrome reception desk. There were two men and four women busy on PCs and phones. On the walls were posters of exotic faraway places.
It was a plush office. So far as Mann could tell, it looked like the expedition industry was booming.
Mann went inside and stood in front of the reception desk and waited for the young receptionist to remember that, when the buzzer sounded downstairs, it usually meant someone was on their way up. Her black metallic fingernails drummed away on the desktop whilst she rocked slightly in her seat and giggled into the phone. She had last night’s heavy makeup smudged under her eyes and her hair was flattened at the back of her head. It looked like she’d been lying on her back for most of the night but probably not sleeping. Her glitzy top revealed more than it covered up and she had the aura of stale wine, stale cigarettes and something else around her. When she finally looked
up from her desk and saw Mann, she blinked, grinned and slammed the handset back on its base.
‘Can I help you, sir?’ she asked in Dutch, tilting her head slightly to one side and then the other as she leant forward over the desk to show him some more cleavage.
‘You can if you speak English.’
She giggled. ‘Of course, sir. What can I do for you?’ She played with her hair. It looked like she could do a lot, thought Mann, except he liked his women washed and at least ten years older.
Mann placed his hands flat on the desk in front of her as he leant across. He gave a lingering look down her top and then he slid his eyes upwards towards hers as he gave her a big smile. She looked up at him, her eyes wide with surprise and delight. He could practically hear her panting. She was as excitable as a kitten with a new ball of string.
‘I am here to talk about the five volunteers who have been kidnapped,’ he said, a little too loudly, whilst keeping the smile. All other activity in the office stopped as all heads turned his way.
‘I’m sorry…‘ The receptionist blinked at him a few times. She lowered her voice instinctively as she lost her smile; just when she was beginning to think it was her lucky day. ‘We are not allowed to speak about
that
.’ She looked over her shoulder and smiled nervously at an older woman who had been watching and listening. She had a nameplate that said ‘Dorothy Jansen’ on her desk.
Mann kept his hands on the desk as he gave a sweeping look around the room, before he stood up
to his full height and brought his police badge out of his inside pocket. And, just in case anyone in the room was hard of hearing or had trouble with English, he pronounced the words slowly and precisely as he flashed his badge.
‘Hong Kong Police.’
It wasn’t worth a damn here but he knew she didn’t know that.
The receptionist looked over at her colleagues for support but they looked away nervously and tried to act like it wasn’t their problem. Only Dorothy continued to watch the situation.
‘One moment, please.’ The receptionist stood, wriggling her micro black skirt down from where it was lodged at the top of her thighs, revealing a hole in her tights, before tottering away on her skinny legs and oversized platforms. She disappeared through the door at the back of the office. Whilst she was gone Mann looked around at the rest of the team. Only Dorothy was smiling back. She looked like she was in her late fifties. Probably come back to work after the divorce. She looked like she had something she wanted to say but wasn’t sure how to begin. She also had a look that said it couldn’t be said in front of everyone.
The receptionist returned. Two minutes later a chiclooking woman in her late thirties appeared. She was olive-skinned. There was something Oriental about her appearance. She was five foot two at the most, size zero, short boyish hair with auburn lights in it. The way she was marching towards him as fast as her pencil skirt allowed, she reminded Mann of an angry wind-up doll
in one of those horror movies. Her eyes were glued on him, beautiful but cold, hard and calculating: all black kohl eyeliner. Her full lips were perfectly painted in burgundy. In an otherwise casual capital like Amsterdam, this woman was a power dresser: a black, tiny-waisted jacket and a pewter-grey silk camisole tucked into the waistband of a black pencil skirt. Mann looked at her feet Victorian-style black ankle boots with aubergine-coloured straps lacing them, plus stiletto heels—she was a brave woman, given that the whole of Amsterdam’s centre was cobbled. She studied him as a female spider eyes a potential mate.
‘This is our manageress, Katrien.’ The receptionist smiled at him apologetically.
The woman’s face remained stony as she said: ‘Follow me.’ This must be the Bitch that Alfie referred to. There would only ever be one woman in one office. Otherwise, like territorial rats, one would definitely have eaten the other.
Mann did as he was told and followed her through the office past the two rows of desks. Only Dorothy dared to look up as they passed. She smiled at Mann sympathetically. Mann winked back.
‘Nice offices,’ he said as they passed two open doors, one with a long hardwood conference table in it, and the other a lounge and informal meeting room with black leather armchairs and a wall of expensive artwork.
The fact that he was taking his time to have a good look around as he went seemed to annoy Katrien greatly. She glanced back irritably a few times to see why he wasn’t coming to heel. At the end of the corridor
they came into a chrome and leather office, glass on two sides with a window overlooking the medieval part of town. Mann could see the old church where sailors had come to pray for hundreds of years, after they’d used the local whores and got blind drunk in the taverns; their sin and their salvation neatly contained less than a few feet from one another. Belle—Amsterdam’s brass statue in honour of sex workers—stood waiting to have the bike removed from its base.
The room had a hint of expensive perfume, undertones of jasmine. There was an orchid growing in the corner but little else—no photos, no personal effects. Katrien’s laptop lay closed but blinking on the desk. The room was devoid of character, thought Mann. Either it wasn’t a place she spent much time in, or she wasn’t a woman who liked to leave a trace. She closed the door behind them and snapped the louvre blind closed to block out the mid-morning sun as it cut a swathe across the black fossil-inlaid desktop. Then she sat down behind her desk and waited for him to sit.
He didn’t take his coat off—there was definite chill in the air but sat and immediately pushed the chair away from the desk and eyeballed her as he rested his forearms on the chair’s leather arms. She didn’t flinch. He could see that Katrien didn’t intimidate easily. He could see she liked to be in charge.
‘Nice orchid. Never seen a golden one before.’ He smiled. She didn’t smile back. ‘Does it remind you of home?’
She looked startled by his suggestion.
‘No.’
‘But you are Asian, aren’t you?’ Her English was impressive but she had hardly any intonation; all her words ended and began flat—which was an Oriental trait, maybe Thai, thought Mann. But if she was Thai, she was from a region he had never been to.
Her eyes took on a new light, a mix of fire and ice, as she stared at him intently.
‘I was born in Burma. I was brought over here when my village was destroyed. A Dutch couple adopted me. I am nationalised Dutch.’
‘Whereabouts in Burma?’
‘The mountains in the north.’
‘You’re from one of the hill tribes?’
‘Very good.’ For a second he saw a hint of a pro position in her eyes. This could get interesting, he thought.
‘The Karen?’
‘No. I am a member of the Lisu tribe.’ They went cold again.
‘Sorry. I only know the Karen.’
‘Everyone only knows the Karen but there are five others: Akha, Hmong, Lisu, Lahu and Yao, each with its own culture, religion, language. Not all of us want the same things as the Karen.’
‘What about the civil war? Doesn’t that affect you?’
‘My tribe is a farming tribe. The Burmese junta leave us alone; we leave them alone.’
‘Magda Cremer isn’t being left alone, is she? What’s she got that you want?’
‘Excuse me?’ She fixed him with a stare that could have cut diamonds.
‘Why are you having her followed?’
‘You expecting a demand for ransom to come directly to them and you want to be able to handle it, maybe? Take your cut? Or perhaps you just don’t trust them, is that it? Look, I’m impartial here,’ he lied. ‘I am just one of the people trying to help free the kids. Do you think they are hiding something from you?’
‘That is ridiculous.’ She studied his card. ‘I don’t know what you want, Inspector…‘ she placed it on the desk ‘…Mann. But we are already cooperating fully with the Dutch and Thai authorities. I am not sure how we can be of help,’ she said, looking him straight in the eye.
‘It doesn’t seem to be getting the kids freed though, does it? It’s been two weeks since they were last seen, since you sent them into a war zone.’ She blinked; otherwise her facial expression didn’t change.
‘It is unfortunate—an unforeseeable turn of events. We are doing everything we can. I can tell you that they were going to work for five months in an established long-standing refugee camp set up to help the Karen. It is on the River Mae, west of Bangkok. Their job was
to help build a new school and to teach the children basic woodwork, literacy, that kind of thing.’
‘You send people all over Asia?’
‘Only to Thailand.’
‘Why only Thailand?’
‘We specialise. We are a small charity. We prefer to build up relations with the local people where we go. We like to keep it personal.’
Mann resisted his urge to smile. God help anyone who got the personal touch from her, he thought.
‘What happened this time?’
‘They were kidnapped after a wave of unrest. Karen freedom fighters. Their ringleader has been identified as a man named Alak. He is responsible for the attack.’ She didn’t hesitate with the answer. She didn’t fluster, she was reciting rather than reasoning, thought Mann. She had learnt her lines well. She watched and waited for a response from him, which he didn’t give. She was definitely an ice maiden. ‘I don’t know whether you are aware of the problems the Burmese and Thai authorities have with these rebels?’ she said with a flicker of scepticism in her eyes and a curl of cynicism on her burgundy mouth. Mann looked suitably perplexed. ‘They have used the unrest to attack the Burmese government.’
‘Why is that, do you think?’
‘I can’t answer that. The Thai government has been very supportive to the displaced Karen villagers for many years; they have housed them in refugee camps. The Thai government is not wealthy—it is a great burden for them—but they are magnanimous and kind
to these people. But the people in the refugee camps still support the rebel freedom fighters.’
‘So you think they want the money to use for arms to carry on the civil war and fight the Burmese junta?’
‘I think it’s likely.’
‘What is the latest?’
‘They have disappeared into the hills. The Burmese army are doing all they can to track them.’
‘Captain Boon Nam?’
‘Yes.’
‘What does Captain Boon Nam think is going on?’
‘He thinks that, as no ransom was raised by the government or the parents, they are headed north.’
‘To where?’
‘He thinks they will be handed over to a second group of rebels who have a foothold in the mountains of northern Burma.’
‘On the border with Laos and Thailand?’
She nodded.
Mann looked at her coldly.
‘You know as well as I do, if they go into the Golden Triangle, they won’t come out alive.’
‘The Golden Triangle is merely a name for an area that spans four countries: Burma, Laos, Vietnam and Thailand.’ Katrien’s facial expression didn’t change.
‘Tell that to the heroin addicts of the world. Next to Afghanistan, it’s the world’s largest supplier of illicit opium.’
‘The Burmese government have done what they can to eradicate it.’
‘Bullshit. It’s their biggest export. The money from it is laundered into hotels, utilities, banks. The whole of the Burmese army is funded by it.’
She rose from her chair. She was clearly agitated. ‘I cannot answer any more of your questions. I simply don’t have the answers. We are cooperating all we can. We hope it will be resolved soon.’ Mann guessed that meant his time was up. He stayed where he was.
‘Okay.’ He eyeballed her. ‘Let’s understand one another. I want an exact—an
exact
—printout of their itinerary before I leave these offices. I want to know where they were going at every stage of their journey and who they were going to meet. I want
numbers, addresses—everything you have. And I mean
everything
.’
She stared back at him, her eyes getting colder by the second.
‘Is that understood?’
He knew she would have loved to lean over the desk and roar in his face. He was intrigued to see if she would snap. For a few seconds he watched her—he could see her contemplating whether to tell him to fuck off, but instead she picked up the phone and asked the receptionist to print off the itinerary. When she put the phone down she picked up Mann’s card from the desk. She held it in her square-edged acrylic talons and studied it. Then she looked up. She could scoop out a lot of flesh with those claws, thought Mann.
‘Of course, Inspector. We are very keen to cooperate with the police…’ She held his card in the air and gave a one-sided, sarcastic smile. ‘…Even those who are not directly involved…The itinerary you require will be ready now. I am sorry I can be of no more help.’
Mann took his time getting to his feet. He was still trying to see how much it would take to make her snap. As she click-clacked ahead along the corridor he dawdled, stopping to get a good look at some of the expedition photos up on the walls. There was one of a group of children crowded round a family of volunteers.
‘You in any of these photos?’ he called to her as she marched ahead. ‘What about this one?’
He read the title:
Orphans of the conflict.
She turned sharply on her heels, her patience exhausted.
‘Were you ever a volunteer? You ever part of an expedition?’
‘No. I am not in the photos and, no, I have never been on an expedition. Follow me, please.’
They walked back through the line of desks and the receptionist handed him the file in a kittenish fashion. Mann noticed that she’d reapplied her makeup and brushed her hair. He gave her an appreciative smile.
Katrien walked him to the door. Mann stopped just short of it. A group of eager-faced teenagers and their nervous-looking parents were waiting in the lobby.
‘Are you still planning to send kids on expeditions?’
‘Yes, of course. We have commitments. We believe the crisis will be over soon.’
‘Do you? Let’s hope you’re right.’ He looked around him at the plush office—the latest Macs, the freshly brewing coffee. ‘You’re a charity, right?’ She nodded. ‘You must charge a lot to send kids into war zones.’
‘We do not send any of our volunteers into an area which is…‘
‘So you said—but that’s exactly what you did. And—by the way—you keep people in camps, policed and without citizenship, dignity, work or proper respect, you are creating a problem the exact problem that we have now. There are always people willing to die for a cause.’
He was about to leave when Dorothy appeared in front of them.
‘Excuse me, sir. Mrs Cremer—Magda—is she okay?’ Dorothy kept her eyes fixed on Mann. She wasn’t going to risk looking at Katrien stood next to him. He could
imagine she’d be glaring at Dorothy right now with those beady black eyes set to stun.
‘Just about.’
‘Please tell her that we are all praying for Jake…‘
‘Thank you. I will pass that on.’ Mann was about to walk away but Dorothy still hovered.
‘It must be especially hard, coming so soon after the last time…’
‘The last time?’ Mann could feel Katrien breathing down his neck. Something was making his stomach churn; he felt a terrible weight in the pit of it. ‘What do you mean?’
‘It’s barely a year since her other son was killed.’