Mr. Miller Read online

  At two-twenty a.m. I was standing outside on the sidewalk, laptop in a carrying case over my shoulder, car key in my hand. A moonless night. Hundreds of stars in a cloudless sky above the apartments on Stadionweg. I didn’t know why, but that night was different, bigger, the stars seemed further away, the cars seemed closer. A plane glided past noiselessly high in the sky on its way to some remote place on earth. All you could see were the blinking lights. Red and white.

  I was dying for a cigarette. I patted the pockets of my jacket with my hands, found a pack and pulled it out. Empty.

  15 Bellilog 06.18.04

  Would you be able to kill another human being? How often have you heard that question? And how often have you responded with some glassy-eyed, theoretical, hypothetical answer? Sure, if I had to. If I were being attacked. If someone wanted to harm me. If that’s what it came down to. Then I think I could beat the shit out of someone. Or if they went after my girlfriend. If they went after Jess. Then, too.

  But they’re just words, until you really start hitting. And keep on hitting. I’ve been walking this earth for a good thirty years now and it’s finally happened. Now I can answer the question. But it doesn’t make me feel any better.

  And then suddenly there’s HB2. Huib here and Huib there. Two names exactly the same. Cloned sounds. Names that know each other, that have more in common that the letters from which they are constructed. The questions are piling up.

  Mail from: HB2

  Subject: All the Bregers

  Hi Michael,

  All the Bregers are related. Even the Bregers I don’t know, but there aren’t too many of them. The Huib Breger you mean is probably my ‘lost’ uncle. Doesn’t live in South Africa any more. Hasn’t for a long time. What do you want to know? Just ask.

  All the best, and in haste,

  HB2

  Mail to: HB2

  Subject: Re: All the Bregers

  HB2!

  I certainly didn’t expect this. Never. Maybe I thought so for a second, or dreamed it, but I never took it seriously. Really. This is really very good. And I hardly know what to ask. Anything you can tell me about your uncle: PLEASE! What he does, where he is, and all the rest.

  The more, the better. And the sooner, the better. And not to be rude, but time is an issue. Of the urgent variety.

  Thanks in advance and all the best,

  Michael

  Mail to: Jess

  Subject: Bad

  Not going well here. Missyoumissyoumissyou,

  Belli

  16 The system wins

  Barely rested, I found myself at the entrance to the Ministry of the Interior, my hair stiff with gel and my nerves stiff with coffee. My head filled with the tattered remains of the previous day, which was distressing since they threatened to undermine my concentration at any moment. Reminders of the fight in Ina Radekker’s apartment were in evidence all over my body. Unexpected movements were painful. There was a new band-aid over the wound above my eye, smaller than the last one but still clearly visible. I stomped on the paving stones and drew the smoke from my cigarette deep into my lungs. Pollution helped. Tar and nicotine provided tangible support. The arrival of Dries van Waayen did the rest.

  ‘You look like you’d been run over by a truck,’ he said.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘It feels that way, too.’

  ‘That’s justice for you.’ With these words he entered the building and announced us at the reception desk. We were given passes and told to wait until we were called. Van Waayen made every effort to demonstrate the difference in position between us. He lost himself in endless remarks about developments in the organization of the Ministry and the importance of communication in those developments, and I kept hearing what Gijs had told me: ‘When Uncle Walter says he’s going to do something, he does it.’

  A secretary came through the security doors wearing her welcome face. She nodded, smiled and extended her hand. Just as Van Waayen was reciprocating her greeting his cell phone began to peep. He pushed me forward at the first possible moment, pulled his phone out of his pocket and excused himself.

  ‘They always know where to find me,’ he said, and laughed the laugh of a man who knows he can’t be missed and likes to apologize for it. ‘But after this, off it goes.’ He answered the call with a short ‘Yes?’ Professional. Then for several seconds he was silent. His eyes grew wider, his mouth dropped open and the concentrated energy suddenly vanished from his body. ‘What?’ he finally said. ‘Wait a minute, but … What …? That’s not possible!’

  He turned away and began walking in circles, shaking his head. He no longer seemed to know where he was. The blood drained further from his face with every step he took, and in one minute he was as white as a sheet. The self-confident volume in his voice was entirely gone.

  ‘… no, of course I’ll come … yes, right away … yes.’ He ended the call and stared vacantly into the distance. The secretary and I walked up to him, but before either of us could say anything his phone began peeping again. He looked at the screen, pushed the button and listened.

  ‘Yes …’ he said. ‘Yes …, do whatever you have to do, it doesn’t matter what. I’ll be back in the office in three quarters of an hour … yes … till then.’ He ended the call and grabbed me by the shoulder. In a corner of the entrance hall I heard what I already knew, except I didn’t yet know any of the details. The body of a woman had been found in a dumpster in the parking garage under the building. The police were already there with a team of detectives. The entrances and exits were all cordoned off. Van Waayen was in shock.

  ‘Because the corpse—the body, I mean—is inside. You see what I’m saying? It’s inside.’

  I nodded. Van Waayen had no idea how well I grasped what he was saying. Shivers ran down my spine. My fingers tingled.

  ‘The body is inside our security system, and that means …’

  His phone began peeping again. He accepted the call automatically and almost immediately his face became rigid.

  ‘No comment,’ he said. He tried to remain polite, but every word he spat out reverberated with doggedness and rage. ‘I said no comment and I mean it!’ He cut off the call with an ill-spirited gesture and a curse. ‘I think the TV cameras have beat me to the scene,’ he said. ‘You’ll have to manage here alone, I’m afraid. Is that okay? I’ll talk to you later.’

  He turned in his pass and vanished. I watched him through the glass wall of the building and knew exactly what he had been talking about. Better, in fact. Ina Radekker was back, at a place where no one had expected her.

  I didn’t know what to think. On the one hand I was glad her body had been found. Now I wasn’t the only one who knew what had happened to her. I wasn’t walking around with disturbing information that I couldn’t share with anyone because no one would believe me. On the other hand, I knew that now all sorts of questions would be asked, questions that I couldn’t always answer. Or didn’t want to answer.

  Walter Eberhuizen was a tall man somewhere in his fifties with blond, greying hair, a high forehead and blue, restless eyes. He did three hours’ worth of talking in fifteen minutes and hardly let me get a word in edgewise. That worked out fine for me. I took notes, asked questions and tried to direct the conversation as quickly as I could to the firm’s first standard conclusion: an inventory. As soon as I had the assignment I could leave.

  But Eberhuizen wouldn’t let himself be won over so easily. He wanted to play the whole game from start to finish, and the longer he took the more I wanted to go. Nothing helped, so I switched over to automatic pilot. I listened, laughed if it seemed appropriate and made a joke when I saw the opportunity, and much to my relief Eberhuizen laughed, too. From that moment on it all went smoothly. I was given a tour, introduced to managers, assistants and staff members, and served even more coffee.

  ‘You’ve got time for a sandwich, I hope?’ Eberhuizen asked. ‘Because we’ve counted on it.’

  No, I thought, but that’s not wha
t I said. ‘Of course. What’s a man without a sandwich?’

  It wasn’t until halfway through the afternoon that I got back on the train to Amsterdam, with a follow-up meeting scheduled and the prospect of a first assignment. It should have been a perfect afternoon, because there’s no better way to travel than in a half empty train. Big and spacious, as if you were riding with time in abundance. A carriage the size of a nice little apartment to deliver you somewhere. And all for less than twenty euros.

  But my lips were drier than ever. There were nine messages on my voicemail. Between applying chapstick and rubbing my sore muscles I listened to them all. Three from clients who wanted to postpone appointments that had already been postponed. One message was from Jessica. Her return from San Francisco had been put on hold. The project she was working on was taking longer than expected and could go on for another week. Or longer. A message from Gijs, wanting to know how it had gone with Uncle Walter, and that back at the office the shit had hit the fan. One from my mother: where was I, that the police had called and had tried to reach me at home but I wasn’t there, either. And two messages from the police with the urgent request to contact Inspector Pletting. As soon as I could, please. It was important.

  I gazed out the window mutely as the meadows raced past. The view from the train between The Hague and Amsterdam is not very exciting. On the contrary, it’s intensely ordinary. The landscape is both familiar and strange. I looked at the straight irrigation ditches, the straight plots of land, the straight fences and hedges, the straight houses and straight streets, and I wondered whether such a high degree of organization was even tenable.

  Probably not.

  I didn’t understand what the police wanted me for. No one knew that I had been in the building that night. Even Breger didn’t know.

  The urgency of the summons didn’t really sink in. My head felt as if it were somewhere else. With my laptop in a bag full of documents and papers, sitting in a train on my way to the office. That’s where I was. On my way back to Amsterdam, where less than twenty-four hours before I had struck a man between the eyes with a massive piece of steel. Hit him so hard that his head had cracked. And no matter how often I told myself that I had no other choice, that I had done what I had to do under the circumstances, it didn’t feel good.

  I called Gijs, and before I could say anything he started to whisper. ‘Don’t come here!’ he hissed. ‘Whatever you do!’

  The first investigation had yet to begin, but HC&P had immediately made a print-out of the automatic pass registration from the night that Ina was murdered. The print-out clearly showed that she had never left the building. But it also showed that I was the only other person in the office that night, so everyone was looking for me. Especially the police.

  ‘They’ve been to our department twice already. There’s a cop stationed out in the corridor and four more downstairs at the entrance.’

  ‘But Van Waayen knew where I was,’ I said.

  ‘Of course he knew,’ said Gijs. ‘But give it some thought. Do you think he’s going to have the police drop in on the Secretary-General of the Ministry of the Interior because he’s sharing a couple of sandwiches with a consultant suspected of murder? Really? Where’s your head at, man?’ He fell silent.

  I cursed.

  ‘Maybe you didn’t do anything, but …’

  His caution felt like betrayal. ‘Maybe?’ I asked. ‘What do you mean, maybe? If that’s the attitude you’re taking, then I know right away what I can expect from the others.’

  ‘I mean maybe you didn’t do it,’ he said, ‘but no one knows that. You were the only other person in the building, so what are people supposed to think?’

  ‘Nothing,’ I said.

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘I wasn’t the only one.’

  ‘No, of course not. I’d say the same thing.’ Gijs cursed. ‘Anyone would say that. Jesus, man, can’t you hear what that sounds like?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I have no idea what that sounds like.’ I was furious. ‘There were at least two and maybe three other people in the building. You tell me what that sounds like!’

  Gijs said nothing.

  ‘For God’s sake, what happened?’ he asked.

  I turned off my phone to avoid getting an unexpected call from Inspector Pletting. When we got to the World Trade Center station I stayed in my seat because I didn’t know whether the police were keeping the station closest to the office under surveillance. If I got out they’d just pick me up off the street, and I couldn’t let that happen. Not now. If the HC&P building pass system had registered my presence alone, I was lost. My word, without witnesses, against a fully automated system. No one would believe me. The system wins. Always. Now that Ina’s body had been found, the police would investigate her apartment, and suddenly I realized what they would find there. Ruud would be long gone, I was convinced of that, but the interior of the apartment was in chaos and my fingerprints were everywhere. If they found any blood stains, it would be my blood. Wherever they looked, it all led to me. Communication is the art of conveying the most complex or unpleasant information as clearly as possible so the other person fully understands, agrees and knows what it means for him.

  I had just been communicated with.

  In the two minutes it took for the train to get from the World Trade Center to the RAI Convention Center my options dropped away one by one. Everything I did could be followed or found by the police. From one minute to the next I’d have to disappear. That’s all there was to it.

  Instinctively I looked around at the other passengers—people like me, people with briefcases and papers, problems and dreams, family and friends—and suddenly I realized that they were very different. They didn’t look like me at all. Not anymore.

  17 Bellilog 06.18.04

  Okay, anyone can read this, and that’s the whole point, but in the meantime the world has become a mirror image. I’m stuck, on the wrong side of the facts, and the facts are not cool. They’re Old World, but they’re tough as nails. The facts dictate, and those who dictate the facts have it all. I don’t dictate anything. I have what I have, and that’s all that I have. Wanted for murder, with no defence. Can’t go to my office. Can’t go to my apartment. Can’t go to my parents. Can’t name any more names. Can’t go to G. J. isn’t here. Can’t drive my car. So what’s left?

  E-mail and money. Bank: 900, savings 16,700, stocks 28,300.

  And the rest of the city. Of the whole country.

  Mail from: HB2

  Subject: Uncle

  Can’t just reveal all. My family wants to know more about you. Who are you? What do you do? Why are you looking for Uncle Huib? Okay?

  Let’s have it.

  HB2

  Mail to: HB2

  Subject: Re: Uncle

  I am Michael Bellicher and I’m on my own—1 MB, that is—consultant with HC&P Amsterdam (look it up on the internet), suspected of murdering a colleague thanks to your uncle.

  Your turn.

  MB

  18 Welcome?

  I didn’t have to worry about money right away, as long as I could get at it. I had no idea how quickly my bank accounts could be blocked, or even whether it would happen at all, but I knew it was a possibility. And that was enough. If I were to run out of money, I’d be done for. This realization made me think. I had to look for a place to stay, and I had to prove that I wasn’t the only one in the office that night. In that order. Not to mention the smaller problems: that I didn’t have the slightest idea why Ida Radekker had been murdered or how I could find Huib Breger, that I had nothing to pin on the man, and that I had no clean clothes.

  I got out of the train at RAI station and took a tram to my bank. There I withdrew all the money from my account and arranged to have all my savings paid out and to sell my entire block of shares. Everything would be available the following day. My own efficiency amazed me. As soon as I knew that I had nowhere to go, a strange sort of detachment came over me. I did what I had to
do. Clinical and desperately calm, mainly in an effort to keep from losing my self-control. That would only make things worse. I accepted the fact that I could no longer return to my own apartment as a temporary anomaly, but as soon as I began thinking about it I broke out in a cold sweat. I was confronted by my own powerlessness, and that cut deeper than I ever could have imagined. I missed Jessica.

  I went to the telephone shop on the corner and bought a new cell phone, prepaid and with tons of credit and a full battery so I could start calling right away. At the local H&M I bought underwear, a couple of T-shirts, socks, two pairs of pants and a jacket, and at the V&D I purchased a backpack, one big enough for my laptop, my clothes and more. Dark red and grey. Black shoulder straps. Before leaving the store I bought a bag of liquorice drops, almost a pound, to give me something to chew and suck on if I suddenly ran out of ideas.

  At Rembrandt Square I took a taxi to a car rental company on the edge of town and rented something small and inconspicuous. Then I sat in the parking lot for several minutes behind the steering wheel, staring at the traffic racing past. I had done everything I could think of. I had money. I had clothes. I could make calls and I was mobile.

  But what now?

  When I got to the RAI I drove under the ring road and took a room in the Novotel, as if it were the most ordinary thing in the world. Man in a suit, with briefcase and backpack. Step by step I was disappearing into the no-man’s-land of the travelling businessman. A parallel universe, one of many, that hundreds of thousands of people passed through every day and in which I slid in effortlessly.

  ‘Will you be paying by credit card?’ asked the man behind the desk. Friendly, inquisitive eyes.