Chapter 1
The Body
When the water drew back at Domburg that morning, Michael Harlan lay on the beach.
Tom Jansen stood a few metres from the body. The police had cordoned off a wide stretch of beach. Further along, by the dune crossing, a forensic team waited beside a van with its rear doors open.
No one came any closer than necessary.
It was still early. Mist hung low over the dunes and robbed the beach of its distance. Jansen turned up his collar. The wind found its way in anyway. The cold rose from the sand, up through his shoes.
Five years ago he had left active service. Last night, Henk Maaskant had called.
For one case, Jansen had been brought back temporarily as an investigator and harbour specialist. Not in his old position, and not indefinitely.
A young officer stood beside the body. His cheeks were red from the wind. Every so often he stamped his feet in the sand.
'Bullet behind the left ear,' he said. 'No signs of a struggle. Watch is still on him.'
Jansen looked at the wrist.
'Still running too.'
The officer pointed at it, then pulled his hand back into his sleeve.
A patrol car stood by the dune crossing with one door open. Messages came over the radio that had nothing to do with Michael Harlan. An arrest in Oostkapelle. A road closure near Westkapelle. A registration number that needed checking.
Jansen crouched down.
It was an expensive piece, probably Swiss. Beneath the glass he watched the second hand creep, steady, unhurried.
An automatic watch lived on movement. If Harlan had been in the water, the waves could have kept it running. So the watch told him nothing about the time Harlan had died.
It only ran.
The seconds went on. The man did not.
Jansen looked at Harlan's face. Pale skin, short grey hair wet against the temples. Behind the left ear was a small, dark wound.
A faded tattoo showed on his forearm.
USMC.
Eagle, globe, anchor.
That matched what Jansen had picked up on the way. Former Marine. Logistics afterwards. Rotterdam. Shipments that looked simpler on paper than they turned out to be. Agricultural machinery. Equipment for Ukraine. Weapons had been mentioned, but not yet in any file Jansen had seen himself.
Papers that never quite tallied.
The gulls had reached Harlan before the police. Later, the medical examiner would record precisely what they had done. For now the birds stood further along the sand. One of them took a few steps forward, stopped and waited.
Jansen understood the patience.
Soon Harlan would leave the beach in a bag.
His phone rang.
Unknown number.
He answered without taking his eyes off the body.
'Jansen.'
'Freja Larsen. Copenhagen Police.'
The woman's voice was calm. Her Dutch was good; only some of the vowels carried something Scandinavian.
'I understand you're involved in the case at Domburg.'
'That's right.'
'The victim's name is Michael Harlan. We've been following him for months.'
Jansen looked at the body again.
'Were.'
There was a moment of silence at the other end.
'Yes,' said Larsen. 'Were.'
'Why?'
'Harlan wasn't only shipping agricultural machinery.'
'What, then?'
'I'm not discussing that over the phone.'
Jansen got to his feet.
'Then why call me?'
'Because Rotterdam appears in our investigation. And because Harlan had contacts there who matter to us.'
'The station can tell you that as well.'
'The station is getting its information.'
'That wasn't my question.'
Larsen waited a few seconds before answering.
'There's a Russian connection,' she said. 'I'm not saying any more about it now. I'm on my way. I want to speak to you before other interests start involving themselves in this case.'
Jansen looked across the beach. The horizon had disappeared into the mist.
'You're quick.'
'Not quick enough for Harlan.'
'When will you be here?'
'I'll call you.'
The line went dead.
Jansen held the phone in his hand a moment longer.
A Russian connection. Maaskant had said nothing about that.
Outside the cordon, he lit a cigarette.
The wind took the smoke at once. There was still no shipping on the horizon. He did not know whether that was normal for Domburg. In Rotterdam he could hardly remember a horizon without a ship on it.
Behind him, someone called out that the medical examiner was arriving.
Jansen kept smoking.
Maaskant had called him the previous evening without saying hello. That had not changed either.
'Zeeland has a body with a harbour past.'
Jansen had waited.
'We need someone who knows the containers.'
'I'm retired.'
Two seconds of silence.
'I know.'
Another two.
'Temporary. This case.'
'Why me?'
Maaskant had said the name.
'Michael Harlan.'
The name was enough.
Five years earlier, Harlan had already appeared in a case file that had never truly been closed.
Jansen remembered a back seat in Katendrecht. An evening when he had decided he was done.
After that, he had left the job and spent five years without looking for a reason to return.
Maaskant had given him one.
Jansen looked at the beach.
The medical examiner was crouching beside Harlan now. One of the forensic officers was photographing the wound. The young officer stood a little way off, his hands deep in his coat pockets.
The watch was still running.
Jansen thought about the file from five years earlier. About what they had known then, and above all what they had not been able to prove.
He looked at the watch once more.
The second hand crept on. Soon the movement would ride along on the stretcher, into the van, over every threshold and around every bend. As long as there was motion, it would keep running.
Only later, somewhere on a shelf in a quiet room, would it finally stop.
No one would know at what moment.
Jansen turned towards the dunes.
Behind them, beyond the mist and a good hour of tarmac, the harbour lay waiting.
He had worked there for about twenty years.
Not impatiently. Harbours are never impatient.
But they forget nothing either.
Jansen dropped his cigarette into the wet sand, ground it out beneath his heel and walked to the car.