The Wrong Girl Read Free

those in industry and on the right. Starting bush fires in some places. Putting them out in others. Always under the same anonymous online identity, one he’d picked deliberately: Stuyvesant. He even used a portrait of the old man as his avatar.
    Saskia came up to him at the desk, a big pout on her face.
    ‘Don’t you want to see Sinterklaas at all?’
    He just smiled.
    She started to count on her gloved fingers.
    ‘You missed him on the boat. You missed him when he was riding his horse . . .’
    His wife was staring at him.
    ‘You can stop saving the world, Henk. For one day. Be with your family.’
    Kuyper pushed back his glasses and sighed. Then pointed at the computer.
    ‘Besides . . . you know I’m not good with all those people around. Crowds . . .’ He touched his daughter’s cheek. ‘Daddy doesn’t like them.’
    The little girl stamped her feet and wrapped her skinny arms around herself, tight against the bright-pink jacket he’d bought her the week before. My Little Pony. Her favourite from the books and the TV. He reached out and squeezed her elbow.
    ‘Sinterklaas came early and brought you that, didn’t he?’
    ‘No.’ The pout got bigger. ‘You did.’
    ‘Maybe I’m Black Pete. In disguise.’ He gestured at the door. ‘Go on. Tonight we can have pizza. I’ll make it up. Promise.’
    He listened as they made their way down the narrow staircase. One set of footsteps heavy, one light. Then he rolled his chair to the window and looked out into the street. His wife was pushing the expensive cargo trike he’d bought them. Orange. The colour of the Netherlands. She climbed on the saddle. Saskia parked herself in the cushioned kid’s area at the front she called the ‘bucket’.
    His phone went. The call didn’t take more than a minute.
    Across the road he saw his first Black Pete. There’d be hundreds roaming the city, baffling every foreigner who stumbled upon them. Anyone could hire the costume, find some make-up and scarlet lipstick. Put on the stupid wig, the frilly jacket, the colourful trousers, the gold earrings. Then buy a bag of sweets from a local shop and hand them out to anyone they felt like.
    Online some of his contacts had whined about them. How they were racist stereotypes. Kuyper had done what he liked to do on the web: put people right. Black Pete probably had nothing to do with Africa. The idea stemmed from an older, darker tradition rooted in something more mysterious than mere geography. One theory was they represented devils, enslaved by Saint Nicholas in the name of good.
    He wasn’t entirely sure any of this was accurate. But he liked to correct people all the same.
    As he watched a second colourful figure emerged from the side of the Herenmarkt. It looked as if this one had been hiding behind the children’s slides there. Waiting for someone.
    Saskia waved and shouted something. He could hear her excited cry rise up from the cobbled street.
    The new one wore dark green, a brown cap, pink feather in it. He didn’t smile at all.
    If he heard the girl Black Pete didn’t show it. He pushed a rusty bike along the street then walked inside the ancient iron pissoir that stood at the end of Herenmarkt by the bridge that led over the Brouwersgracht into the city.
    Kids don’t always get what they ask for, Henk Kuyper told himself. And went back to his messages.
    By the time they got to Leidseplein and the climax of the parade Bakker was very glad they hadn’t brought Sam. She was a country girl from Dokkum, in Amsterdam only since the spring. Back home she’d watched the Sinterklaas parade on TV once or twice. Nothing prepared her for the reality.
    The city had turned into a single, happy throng of humanity. From the waterfront to the centre the masses stretched, then out to the museums and the Canal Ring. Old and young with glitter and decorations in their hair. Fathers with toddlers perched on their shoulders. Mothers holding up tiny babies too young to understand what