time for a glass or two?’
‘You two go off on your own,’ Vos said with a wan smile. ‘I’ll clear up here. See you in the morning.’
She tried to argue. Van der Berg stopped her. Then they left.
In the car Bakker said, ‘We could always go for a quick one in the Drie Vaten anyway. He looks like he needs company.’
Van der Berg started the engine.
‘No he doesn’t.’
She folded her long arms and stared at him. They all knew that look by now.
‘He worries me. When he’s like this.’
Van der Berg turned and wagged a finger in her face.
‘We’ve been here before, Laura. That’s how he is. If you push him . . . if you get too close . . . it only gets worse. You know that. I know it too.’
She stayed silent.
‘And the reason it pisses us both off,’ he added, ‘is we understand there’s absolutely nothing we can do about it. Now. I found this new place. They do Kwak on draught.
Do you think you can manage to drink it this time without breaking anything?’
Kwak was Belgian. They served it in a glass that was round at the bottom and had to be placed in a wooden stand to stay upright. She loved the beer, hated the way it was served. There’d
been too many accidents with it before.
‘I don’t want Kwak,’ she said.
‘Then drink something else.’
‘Is there a bar in Amsterdam you haven’t taken me to?’
‘Yes,’ he insisted, starting the engine. ‘There is. There always will be.’
19
There was a picture on the wall of Gert Brugman’s living room. The Cupids twenty years before. He played bass with the band and sang, a tall smiling man in the photo,
muscular bordering on corpulent with a friendly fisherman’s face and a mane of well-combed black hair.
He didn’t look like that any more.
Brugman lived in a first-floor apartment above a smart shop selling mushrooms, dope seed and other highs. It was a street behind the bustling tourist nexus of Muntplein. Not squalid. Not elegant
either. He’d bought the place with the money they made from the last two albums. Brugman was born in Volendam and had once worked as a fisherman, something the publicists loved to push. Even
before everything fell apart he was starting to grow weary of the place. Adulation was fine but in the town by the sea it could all get too close. Locals he hated patted him on the back and said,
with a grin, the latest record was shit. Then he had to deal with the women. One-night stands were there aplenty but they weren’t so much fun when you kept seeing the discards every time you
set foot out of the door.
Not that women were a problem now. In the aftermath of the Timmers case he’d fled to the city – one bedroom, a window overlooking an alley. Six months later he’d had a stroke.
Time had helped but he still walked with a noticeable limp. Beer and bad food had made him fat. His hair remained long but rarely combed, grey and thin. Brugman didn’t change clothes much
unless he got a gig singing old songs in one of the Jordaan bars. The old bastard who ran the smart shop underneath owned the freehold to the building. And hated him. Like most of his neighbours
who scuttled away the moment Brugman appeared.
Lately he’d started to get letters from the building management promising the smart shop bastard would take legal action if he didn’t pay all his back maintenance fees. They could go
hang. He didn’t have money to waste on that crap. The royalties from The Cupids had been locked up in legal disputes ever since Rogier Glas died and Frans Lambert vanished. They’d
written the songs between them. He was just the singer so they took the lion’s share. Eight years before he’d nagged the lawyers and discovered something like three million euros in
royalties was locked up in a legal thicket so complex Brugman couldn’t begin to understand it.
That was when Jaap Blom, their manager, had pulled himself out of politics for an afternoon, turned up smiling, got Brugman stinking drunk and
‘You two go off on your own,’ Vos said with a wan smile. ‘I’ll clear up here. See you in the morning.’
She tried to argue. Van der Berg stopped her. Then they left.
In the car Bakker said, ‘We could always go for a quick one in the Drie Vaten anyway. He looks like he needs company.’
Van der Berg started the engine.
‘No he doesn’t.’
She folded her long arms and stared at him. They all knew that look by now.
‘He worries me. When he’s like this.’
Van der Berg turned and wagged a finger in her face.
‘We’ve been here before, Laura. That’s how he is. If you push him . . . if you get too close . . . it only gets worse. You know that. I know it too.’
She stayed silent.
‘And the reason it pisses us both off,’ he added, ‘is we understand there’s absolutely nothing we can do about it. Now. I found this new place. They do Kwak on draught.
Do you think you can manage to drink it this time without breaking anything?’
Kwak was Belgian. They served it in a glass that was round at the bottom and had to be placed in a wooden stand to stay upright. She loved the beer, hated the way it was served. There’d
been too many accidents with it before.
‘I don’t want Kwak,’ she said.
‘Then drink something else.’
‘Is there a bar in Amsterdam you haven’t taken me to?’
‘Yes,’ he insisted, starting the engine. ‘There is. There always will be.’
19
There was a picture on the wall of Gert Brugman’s living room. The Cupids twenty years before. He played bass with the band and sang, a tall smiling man in the photo,
muscular bordering on corpulent with a friendly fisherman’s face and a mane of well-combed black hair.
He didn’t look like that any more.
Brugman lived in a first-floor apartment above a smart shop selling mushrooms, dope seed and other highs. It was a street behind the bustling tourist nexus of Muntplein. Not squalid. Not elegant
either. He’d bought the place with the money they made from the last two albums. Brugman was born in Volendam and had once worked as a fisherman, something the publicists loved to push. Even
before everything fell apart he was starting to grow weary of the place. Adulation was fine but in the town by the sea it could all get too close. Locals he hated patted him on the back and said,
with a grin, the latest record was shit. Then he had to deal with the women. One-night stands were there aplenty but they weren’t so much fun when you kept seeing the discards every time you
set foot out of the door.
Not that women were a problem now. In the aftermath of the Timmers case he’d fled to the city – one bedroom, a window overlooking an alley. Six months later he’d had a stroke.
Time had helped but he still walked with a noticeable limp. Beer and bad food had made him fat. His hair remained long but rarely combed, grey and thin. Brugman didn’t change clothes much
unless he got a gig singing old songs in one of the Jordaan bars. The old bastard who ran the smart shop underneath owned the freehold to the building. And hated him. Like most of his neighbours
who scuttled away the moment Brugman appeared.
Lately he’d started to get letters from the building management promising the smart shop bastard would take legal action if he didn’t pay all his back maintenance fees. They could go
hang. He didn’t have money to waste on that crap. The royalties from The Cupids had been locked up in legal disputes ever since Rogier Glas died and Frans Lambert vanished. They’d
written the songs between them. He was just the singer so they took the lion’s share. Eight years before he’d nagged the lawyers and discovered something like three million euros in
royalties was locked up in a legal thicket so complex Brugman couldn’t begin to understand it.
That was when Jaap Blom, their manager, had pulled himself out of politics for an afternoon, turned up smiling, got Brugman stinking drunk and
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