Little Sister

by David Hewson

  ‘Without forms . . . without organization we’d be lost,’ she insisted.

  The phone on Koeman’s empty desk rang. Vos looked at it and didn’t move. So did Van der Berg. Bakker sighed and marched over to take the call.

  There was a bright and cheery woman on the other end.

  ‘I want to talk to Ollie,’ she said. ‘Tell him Vicky’s back in town. It’s his lucky day.’

  ‘Ollie who?’

  ‘Ollie Haas,’ the woman replied briskly. ‘Don’t you know your boss’s name?’

  ‘Yes. I do. Who’s Ollie Haas?’

  ‘Your brigadier!’

  Van der Berg was at the desk already. His hand was the size of a goalkeeper’s glove, fingers like sausages, out and beckoning.

  ‘No,’ Bakker said. ‘I think you’ve got the wrong—’

  She let Van der Berg retrieve the phone and listened. Vos was there now too. A brief conversation. Vicky was newly returned from a long stay in Turkey. Ollie Haas was an old friend. Lover maybe. She wanted to get in touch.

  ‘He doesn’t work here any more,’ Van der Berg told her. ‘Hasn’t for . . . I don’t know . . . years.’

  ‘We had a falling-out. Lost touch. I went to live abroad. I really want to see him again.’

  ‘I’m sorry . . .’

  ‘Do you have his address? His phone number?’

  Van der Berg put his hand over the speaker and relayed the questions to Vos. He shook his head and took the phone.

  ‘I’m brigadier here now. Vos. Officer Haas is retired.’

  ‘I’m an old friend! Surely you can tell me where he lives.’

  ‘Write me a letter,’ Vos suggested. ‘I’ll pass it on to human resources. They can try and—’

  ‘This is all to do with that shit you lot got yourselves in, isn’t it? Volendam? The Timmers kids? I thought you people had buried that once and for all.’

  After that the line went dead.

  ‘What the hell was going on there?’ Van der Berg wondered. ‘No one wants to get in touch with Ollie Haas.’

  ‘Who?’ Bakker asked.

  ‘You won’t remember,’ Vos said. ‘You were a kid. It was . . . years ago.’

  ‘Ten years,’ Van der Berg said. ‘We watched that whole farce fall apart in front of our eyes. They wouldn’t let me and Pieter anywhere near it. And then—’

  ‘It was just an old girlfriend,’ Vos suggested.

  Van der Berg was staring at Bakker.

  ‘You remember The Cupids, don’t you? The pop group?’

  She tugged at her long red hair and wrinkled her nose.

  ‘Rings a bell. Didn’t they break up? There was a scandal or something?’

  He snorted.

  ‘A scandal? One of them wound up dead. One went missing. As for Gert Brugman . . . well, you can still catch him singing for beer in the bars around here. Used to be a ladies’ man. Looked a real mess the last time I saw him.’

  ‘There was a murder,’ Bakker remembered. ‘A family. It was in all the papers for a while. I was in Friesland. At school. Volendam . . .’

  Van der Berg grunted at the name of the fishing town half an hour away from the city.

  ‘Have you ever been there?’ Vos asked.

  She stretched out her long legs, yawned and said, ‘No. Everyone says it’s full of tourists.’

  Vos checked his watch.

  ‘Not just tourists. Career development, Laura. You’re supposed to read up on old cases from time to time. Cold ones too.’

  ‘I am,’ she agreed.

  ‘Well there’s your assignment. Go down to records and pull out what you can on the Timmers murders. Read through the files. Tell me where Ollie Haas went wrong.’

  ‘Stop at twenty screw-ups,’ Van der Berg added. ‘After that you just might go crazy. At least it cost that idiot his job in the end. They should have snatched his pension too.’

  She brightened at that. The day had been long and boring.

  ‘So who’s going to take me through it all? Or do I get the pleasure of both of you?’

  ‘Sam’s going to need his supper in a while,’ Vos said. ‘I’ve got some washing to pick up.’

  ‘May I hold his lead, sir?’ Van der Berg asked meekly. ‘Along the way?’

  ‘It’s half past three!’ Bakker cried. ‘Even you two can’t bunk off work this early.’

  Vos checked his watch again and wondered if there was something wrong with the battery. The minute hand had scarcely moved. They had another hour to kill at least. Time seemed to have got stuck in this steamy, slow weather.

  ‘Expense forms!’ he said, raising a finger into the air. Van der Berg groaned then banged his head gently on the desk. ‘After that I’m buying.’

  Bakker closed her eyes and made weeping noises.

  ‘This is all your fault,’ Van der Berg told her.

  She got to her feet.

  ‘I’m going to look for those files. What was his name again?’

  ‘Ollie Haas,’ the two men replied in unison.

  ‘The Timmers case,’ Van der Berg added. ‘Don’t delve too deep, Laura. Not if you want to sleep tonight.’

  3

  Sisters, brought into the world thirty – ten times three – minutes apart, Kim and Mia stayed by the heavy window staring at Volendam across the placid water, understanding each other’s thoughts the way they always did, knowing they both saw the same thing.

  Three boats broke the bright horizon.

  Three states of existence. Past. Present. Future.

  Three parts to the world now visible. Earth. Water. Sky.

  The seafront of Volendam seemed closer than usual. Without speaking a word each knew what the other was remembering. A warm summer evening ten years before. A backing band was starting up on a platform near the landing stage.

  Three days and three nights Jonah lingered in the belly of the whale.

  Three days and three nights Jesus spent in the heart of the earth before he rose to glory.

  Three girls in blue hot pants, sparkly scarlet shirts, patent red leather shoes, yellow hair tied back in buns, faces heavy with mascara and lipstick, walking up the stairs onto the stage.

  Three men before them. Famous once upon a time. Revered. Lucky escapees from the round of fishing and drink and hard leisure that was the lot of many in the town by the water.

  Applause then. Shouts from the audience. A few yelled phrases that eleven-year-old girls didn’t really understand.

  They stood on the waterfront stage dancing slowly to the ballad their mother had taught them from the CD player in their living room.

  Then the girls began to sing in perfect harmony with such delicacy, charm and precision they silenced the half-drunk audience and kept the rapt attention of the lone TV camera that had come out from Amsterdam seeking cheery sequences to fill the empty minutes of local summer news.

  The camera loved them, Freya said.

  The audience too.

  Everyone.

  And those three men who mattered most, grinning figures in denim seated at the front of the stage on chairs placed like thrones, judging everyone the moment they rose to take the steps.

  This was a talent contest, Freya said. One of those win-or-lose moments in life when everything might change for the better. A chance to be spotted. To rise from obscure poverty in Volendam to something bigger, in the Netherlands, perhaps abroad one day.

  The lovely singing sisters. The Golden Angels. Children now but teenagers soon. Freya had that transition mapped out all along. Cute then sultry. Adorable then desirable. An inch or two of that line had to be crossed at the start.

  ‘You can save us,’ she told them, putting on their make-up at the back of the grubby bar where she waited tables. The place both tantalized and scared them. It was called the Taveerne van de Zeven Duivels, the Inn of the Seven Devils. From the ceiling leering demons stared down at the customers, waving pitchforks. They met their mother there almost every day. ‘You can take us out of this shitty b
ackwater, darlings. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?’

  The men who judged them were called The Cupids. They had been famous throughout Holland once. Then the years and changing fashion had taken hold.

  Freya Timmers knew them well. She’d sung on a few of their records. The old songs from the Eighties. The later stuff when they moved awkwardly into trance and rock and anything else their manager threw at them, trying to keep a grip on any audience they could find. Even now the girls could hear their mother’s voice on the last song she made with them, a slow, sad ballad that was a return to form, going somewhere in the charts until that August night when three little sisters sang it and knew they would never forget the words again.

  The lines remained burned in their memories, in English, the language The Cupids liked most of all.

  In a soft, calm voice, almost a whisper, Kim stared out of the window and sang the first line.

  Love is like a chain that binds me.

  Mia followed with the second.

  Love is like a last goodbye.

  Together they sang the third.

  Love is all I have to keep you.

  Eyes closed, memories sweeping over them. Kim thinking the lower note, Mia the middle, they waited, listening, praying.

  A high tone. Jo. A kid’s name. A kid she’d always be. Jo took the last line in their head and the three of them sang it together, note perfect, all seven syllables in the key of F.

  Love is gone. And so am I.

  Kim’s hand reached out and squeezed her sister’s.

  Four brief fragments. As much as they could manage.

  Mia wiped away her tears.

  No words. They weren’t necessary.

  Behind the closed door of the director’s office their fate was being decided. For years they’d been praying for this moment. All they could do now was wait.

  4

  Henk Veerman pulled out some of the photos passed on by the police after Rogier Glas was found dead in his van not far from the Timmers’ home.

  ‘Do you want to take a look?’ he asked, scattering a few pictures across the desk.

  Simon Klerk frowned and asked, ‘Why?’

  ‘It was a long time ago,’ Visser pointed out once more. ‘They were children. They didn’t understand the difference between right and wrong. And even if they did . . .’

  She pulled up the nearest photograph and showed it to them. A burly middle-aged man stuck behind the wheel of a Ford Transit. Throat cut. Trousers down. Something bloody stuck in his mouth.

  ‘Even if they were aware of what they were doing,’ she went on, ‘there are plenty of people out there who think they had good reason.’

  Veerman groaned then tidied the papers back into the file.

  ‘Except they got the wrong man. The police said there was no evidence to link Glas . . . or the other two in that group . . . The Cupids . . . to what happened.’

  ‘By what happened . . . you mean the murder of their mother, father and sister?’ she demanded.

  ‘Precisely,’ he agreed. ‘No one’s arguing it was a picnic—’

  ‘A picnic?’

  ‘I worded that badly. It was horrendous. God knows it would have screwed up any kid who witnessed it. But—’

  ‘They didn’t actually see him there, did they?’ Klerk asked. ‘I thought that was the whole point.’

  ‘This was ten years ago,’ Visser insisted. ‘Mia and Kim wouldn’t talk about it then. Any more than they’ll talk about it now—’

  ‘Haas investigated,’ Veerman interrupted. ‘He said Rogier Glas had nothing to do with the family’s murder. Not that it mattered because, well . . .’ He took out one of the photos again and pushed it round the desk. ‘Those two little angels caught him in his van. Slashed him to ribbons. Then cut off his cock and rammed it down his throat. And now you want to let them loose in Amsterdam.’

  Klerk shook his head.

  ‘They wouldn’t be loose. They’d be under constant supervision. When I’m not there we’ll have someone else. If I see any sign they’re likely to abscond. To misbehave—’

  ‘Misbehave?’ Veerman’s index finger stabbed at the file. ‘You call that misbehaving?’

  Visser groaned.

  ‘They were distraught children. They acted on the spur of the moment after witnessing the aftermath of a gruesome and dreadful crime. We’ve been observing them closely for eighteen months. They’ve been punished enough. It’s our duty now to at least try to give them a chance of rehabilitation.’

  ‘They’re smart as hell,’ the director interrupted. ‘You said that yourself. This could all be an act.’

  ‘For what purpose?’ she wondered. ‘They came in here as children. They’ve been good as gold lately. Marken’s an institution for severely disturbed adolescents. Kim and Mia have turned twenty-one. Either we hand them over to an adult mental institution or we make other arrangements.’ She hesitated to make sure he understood what came next. ‘If we pass them on to someone else that will be marked down against us, you know. They’ll say we had those girls for ten years and didn’t do a damned thing for them. They’d be right too. There’ll be questions asked. Do we want that?’

  Veerman didn’t answer.

  ‘I think,’ she added, ‘your response is coloured by the nature of the crime. Men attack women in the vilest of ways all the time. We’re used to it. We accept it.’

  ‘Accept it?’ Veerman glared at her. ‘Are you serious?’

  ‘I meant that we accept the fact it happens. But when a woman fights back . . .when two young girls do that especially.’ She pulled out the photo again. ‘Yes. They cut off his cock. And that’s what you all found so shocking, isn’t it? If it hadn’t been for that they’d have been out of here years ago.’

  He brushed the picture back into the file then said, ‘Do you have any idea what will happen if you’re wrong? If you let that pair out into the world and they go bad again?’

  ‘It won’t—’

  ‘But if it does, Irene. We’d be dead here. You. Me. Everything.’

  ‘It won’t,’ she insisted. ‘I guarantee it. Simon will watch their every move. I won’t allow them back to Volendam. That would be dangerous. We’ll just keep them in the house in the Museum Quarter. Watch them. See how it goes.’

  ‘For how long?’ Veerman wondered.

  ‘For as long as it takes,’ Klerk said. ‘I’m not saying they’re cured. But they’re close to it. They’re nice kids.’

  ‘They’re twenty-one,’ the director objected. ‘Not kids any more.’

  ‘I know.’ The nurse laughed. ‘I forget that sometimes. They come across as so young. Naive.’ He thought for a moment then said it anyway. ‘Innocent.’

  ‘And they do sing beautifully,’ Visser added. ‘I think that could be good therapy for them. If we could put them in touch with an amateur choir or something.’

  ‘I don’t like it.’

  ‘Obviously,’ she said. ‘But we can’t keep them locked up here forever. The ministry’s got civil rights people asking awkward questions about mental health committals already. All we need is for them to make the girls—’

  ‘They’re not girls!’

  ‘All we need is for them to make the Timmers sisters a test case and then we’ll have everyone on us. Lawyers. The media. You name it.’ She leaned back and looked out of the window. ‘That would be a shame, Henk. It’s quiet here. Beautiful. We can work . . . undisturbed. I know you like that. We all do.’

  The papers were in front of him on the desk. All he had to do was sign.

  ‘I want to ask them a question,’ Veerman said. ‘Get them in here. If they answer right you can have what you want.’

  ‘What question?’ the nurse asked.

  The director pushed his glasses up his nose and glared at him.

  ‘That’s for them. Not you.’

  5

  Simon Klerk stuck his head round the door. The girls stopped singing. They could still hear a third voice dying in their hea
ds.

  ‘Can we go?’ Kim asked.

  ‘Soon,’ he said. ‘The director wants to talk to you first. He wants . . .’

  The nurse stepped out of the room and gently closed the door behind him.

  ‘He wants to ask you a question.’

  Mia said, ‘What question?’

  ‘I don’t know. But it’s important. You need to give the right answer.’

  They walked up to him . . . one, two, three, one, two, three.

  ‘What’s the right answer, Simon?’ Kim pleaded.

  Mia laughed and said straight off, ‘If he doesn’t know the question . . .’

  He struggled for a moment as he often did with them of late. They were so . . . confident.

  ‘Just tell the truth,’ he suggested. ‘You can’t go wrong with that.’

  They giggled and looked at him.

  ‘All the truth?’ Kim asked.

  He blushed.

  ‘It’ll just be a silly question.’

  Klerk went back and opened the door then led them in.

  Veerman sat at the desk. Freya, their mother, had a phrase for that expression. She said it looked as if someone had swallowed an angry wasp. Irene Visser stroked her short blonde hair and told them to sit.

  It was like the hearing they’d had when they were eleven. They were about to be judged.

  Across the water Volendam sat listening.

  ‘What you did . . . the reason you’re here,’ Veerman began awkwardly. ‘It was very bad. You know that?’

  ‘Of course we do,’ Kim said.

  ‘Not a day goes by when we don’t regret it,’ Mia added, always the one to soften her sister’s curt candour.

  ‘You killed a man—’

  ‘So they told us,’ Kim cut in.

  ‘You murdered him,’ Veerman said. ‘You do accept that, don’t you?’

  ‘They punished us,’ Mia agreed with a nod. ‘They said we deserved it.’

  ‘Did he?’ Veerman asked in a firm, loud voice now. ‘Did Rogier Glas?’

  The girls sat in silence.

  Irene Visser moved forward and placed her elbows on the desk, the way she did when they were talking in her office.

  ‘Did Rogier Glas murder your parents?’ she asked. ‘Your sister Jo? Do you still think that?’