The Devil's Playground Read Free Page A

the dead man’s flat. And how the man
    with him, a uniform, started vomiting and collapsed on to
    the floor almost immediately. Not that you could really tell
    what constituted the floor. That was the thing. The man had
    wallpapered his whole flat with porn, torn from magazines,
    jagged edge of flesh overlapping flesh, creating monstrosities
    and freaks unbelievable and disturbing. A tableau like something
    from the tormented mind of Hieronymous Bosch. But
    it wasn’t just the walls. That wouldn’t have made the uniform
    so sick, nor given Van Hijn a dizzying nauseous headache
    like the constant spinning after stepping off a fairground
    ride. No, it was the fact that everything had been wallpapered.
     
    All the surfaces had been meticulously covered with porn:
    the ceiling, totally covered, the chairs and the tables and the
    table legs, the phone, the whole border and back of the TV,
    everything but the screen. Within a couple of minutes Van
    Hijn had lost all sense of perspective and depth. The room
    seemed to pulsate, the floor to float. He reached out for
    objects that turned out to be much further away than he
    anticipated. Eyes followed him around the room. A woman
    with six legs and thirteen breasts seemed to smile. And he
    remembered the keepsakes that the rapist had mounted on
    a porn-splashed altar, the reason for that smell, all thirty of
    them, tagged and dated, with names and small photos
    attached to each. They had to carry him out of there.
    Van Hijn snapped out of the dark tangle of his memories
    and stared at Beeuwers. The rain made him look like a piece
    of discarded furniture. Van Hijn stepped forward and leaned
    into the captain’s sweating face. ‘This is my case, always has
    been, since the first body and I’m not going to let your goon
    take over. I don’t care what the fuck you think about it.’
    ‘In that case you’ll find your transfer coming sooner than
    even you anticipated, I assure you.’ The captain tried to smile,
    to show him that yes, he was still in control, but he couldn’t
    make it, his lips refusing to rise. He knew that the detective
    had got the better of him this time. He would have to do
    something about that.
    Van Hijn winked at the captain. A faint smile, barely
    discernible in the rain. He turned away before the captain
    could answer. He didn’t care. There was nothing left to lose.
     
    He hit the streets hard, his feet splashing the puddled rain,
    his head hunched down, fists stuffed into his pockets. The
    dialogue with the captain had angered him more than he’d
    realized. Hadn’t demoting him been enough? Yet, there was
     
    always this tendency to push home the further humiliation,
    to consolidate the gain and destroy the enemy. He shouldn’t
    have been surprised, or only at his own naivete perhaps.
     
    He could go back to the cinema, catch the last hour of the
    film, pretend he’d been there all along. No, somehow he
    didn’t think that was going to work today. He could still see
    the man’s scarred feet and the way the passers-by had
    wrestled with each other to get a glimpse of the body before
    it was carried away. His mouth felt dry and bitter, his head
    heavy. He stopped at a cafe, ate two pieces of chocolate
    pecan cheesecake, too fast, and stared at a poster advertising
    a forthcoming fashion show. The redhead looked at him
    from its surface, smiling, saying, who cares about all that and
    what does it matter anyway? When the sugar hit, he felt his
    whole body relax, deflate and soften like an old sponge
    soaked in a bath. He smoked a cigarette and headed back
    to the station, back to life and to the phone call that he has
    to make.
     
    This is how it begins. With Jon staring out of his window at
    the space where the tramp once stood. Wondering where
    the old man was. If he would come back again to this spot.
    If he would come back at all.
    He turned to the empty room, bare except for the clutter
    and murmur of the accusing computer, the deadline