Little Sister

by David Hewson

  The girls looked at each other. They seemed ready to cry.

  ‘No,’ Mia whimpered.

  ‘No!’ Kim was breaking too. ‘You said he didn’t, Irene. You wouldn’t lie. Mr Glas . . .’

  Tears did fill her eyes then. And her sister’s.

  ‘Give them a minute,’ Visser pleaded. ‘Henk. You can see for yourself. We’re going somewhere that should be private. Between the two of them and me.’

  ‘I’m the director,’ Veerman insisted. ‘I sign the release.’

  ‘Mr Glas . . . we’re sorry,’ Mia said in a timid voice close to a hurt whisper. ‘We were scared. We were young. We didn’t know what we were doing—’

  ‘Innocent,’ her sister added. ‘Mr Glas was innocent.’

  ‘There!’ Irene Visser declared. ‘You wanted an admission, Henk. You’ve got it. No one knows who killed your family, girls. Do they now?’

  They nodded.

  ‘No one,’ Kim agreed.

  ‘And,’ Mia added, ‘they never will.’

  Visser looked at Veerman. So did Simon Klerk.

  ‘Very well,’ the director said and got his pen. ‘You can leave. Go with the nurse. He’ll drive you into the city. Do as he says. We don’t want you back here. Please . . .’

  They blinked as if ready to cry. Then got to their feet and stuttered out their thanks.

  ‘May we pack?’ Mia asked. ‘We have a few things. Just a few. No case though.’

  ‘We’ll find you something,’ Visser said.

  Mia added, ‘You’ve been so kind. Director Veerman. Irene. Simon. So very kind. We didn’t deserve such . . . such a family. Yes. That’s the right word.’

  ‘The proper word,’ Kim agreed.

  ‘Go and get ready,’ Klerk said. ‘I’ll come for you. We’ll take my car.’

  They left, arm in arm, nodding, bowing, grateful.

  Veerman sat in silence. Visser checked her messages. Klerk texted his wife to say he’d be late home.

  Down the corridor Mia and Kim Timmers walked, happy, hand in hand.

  Two voices in harmony singing an old and happy folk song. A third accompanying them in their head.

  6

  Bakker never came back from records. At ten to five Vos gave up on the paperwork and the minute hand on his watch and the two men walked Sam down Elandsgracht at a constant steady pace. They made the terrier’s supper on Vos’s houseboat, watched, laughing, as he wolfed it down then strolled over to his bed in the stern and fell fast asleep.

  ‘Have we earned a beer now?’ Van der Berg asked.

  ‘Not really,’ Vos said. ‘But who cares?’

  Two minutes later the pair of them were perched on rickety stools at the counter of the Drie Vaten staring warily at a new bottled beer Sofia Albers had bought in from a microbrewery start-up.

  ‘I hate change,’ Van der Berg declared.

  ‘But do you like the beer?’ she asked.

  He sipped the pale ale again and said, ‘It’s different. Does that answer your question?’

  The door opened and Laura Bakker came in and stood over them, arms folded.

  ‘We’re trying Sofia’s new beer,’ Vos told her.

  ‘Was that your idea of a joke?’

  ‘Ollie Haas?’ Van der Berg said. ‘The Timmers case? The Cupids?’

  ‘The Cupids,’ Sofia muttered and headed for the kitchen, shaking her head.

  ‘No joke, Laura,’ Vos added. ‘You can’t have read through all those files. Not so quickly. Not even you—’

  ‘What files? I’ve spent an hour and a half chasing thin air.’

  The two men sipped at their beer and waited, knowing no comment on their part was required.

  ‘I went to the digital archive first,’ Bakker declared. ‘Nothing. Then the paper archive. All that’s there are a few statements, a handful of photos and a set of psychiatric reports on the two sisters who survived.’

  Vos nodded at the table by the toilet. It was empty as usual.

  ‘Four people were murdered,’ Van der Berg said. ‘Father, mother, daughter. Then the guitarist in the band. There’s a lot more to it than a few files.’

  ‘I’m telling you, Dirk. I know how the system works. That’s all there is.’

  Sofia came and placed a fresh bottle of the new beer in front of her then retreated. Van der Berg poured the drink.

  ‘I’ll take a look in the morning,’ he said, handing her the glass. ‘Sometimes these things lurk in places a newcomer like you might not know.’

  ‘How many decades do I need to spend here before I cease to be a newcomer? Look. I went through the archive records. I can see they were there. Lots of them. They got marked for deletion five years ago. By—’

  ‘No,’ Vos insisted. ‘That’s not possible. Technically it’s still an open case. Not that anyone’s—’

  ‘They’re gone! I’m telling you. It’s there on the file. De Groot marked them down for deletion one week after he became commissaris. Every investigative report that Ollie Haas wrote has been erased by the system. Every paper copy shredded.’

  Van der Berg raised his glass and peered at the clear chestnut liquid. Sofia arrived with four freshly boiled eggs and a saucer of salt. Then she returned with Vos’s washing neatly folded and ironed in a wicker basket. He handed over a twenty-euro note and said thanks.

  ‘I like this beer,’ Van der Berg announced. ‘I think it’ll make the perfect marriage with an egg.’

  Laura Bakker closed her eyes and whispered, ‘Oh the life we lead.’

  Beyond the window the Prinsengracht was busy with early-evening traffic. Tourist boats full of visitors gazing out at the city on the water. The world seemed quiet and at peace.

  ‘Let’s deal with this in the morning,’ Vos said. ‘I’m sure it’s all just a . . . misunderstanding.’

  7

  Simon Klerk gave them a bag and left them to pack their things. Then the girls went to the accommodation block and said goodbye to the other nurses and the two men in the security office. After that they went to the kitchen and kissed the two big friendly women who worked there. The cooks wept and that brought tears all round.

  ‘Time,’ the nurse said after a while.

  The kitchen women got a small audience together and pleaded for one last song. The girls looked at Klerk. He nodded. So there, watched in silence by the gardener, the security men, four nurses and the cooks, Kim and Mia sang the one they were always asked for.

  Draai het wieletje nog eens om.

  Turn the wheel around again.

  A silly ditty for toddlers but they performed it beautifully, did the dance, clapped their hands when it was called for.

  Everyone applauded and wept a little more.

  ‘We haven’t said goodbye to Dr Visser,’ Mia pleaded. ‘Or Director Veerman. Or—’

  ‘They’re busy,’ Klerk told her.

  ‘Or any of the patients,’ Kim added. ‘Kaatje. We’ve got to say goodbye to Kaatje—’

  ‘We think it’s best the patients stay inside. It might upset them, seeing you leave.’

  Kim frowned and stamped her feet but, to her sister’s relief, stayed quiet.

  ‘They could be jealous,’ Klerk added.

  He picked up the bag. Now they saw it had Disney characters on the side.

  ‘We need to go, girls.’

  The sisters dried their eyes and went outside to stand in the car park next to the lime trees and the rubbish bins, taking one last look around.

  ‘We won’t come back, Simon,’ Mia asked. ‘Will we?’

  ‘Not if you do as I say.’

  The pair of them gazed at him.

  ‘You will do as I say, won’t you?’

  ‘We promised, didn’t we?’ Kim replied.

  ‘Promised,’ her sister agreed.

  The Marken sanatorium had been their home for so long. Its grey walls, the high wire fence, the wood by the water, branches swaying in the warm lake breeze . . . all these things had served as their world as they gre
w from children to teenagers to serious, introverted young adults.

  Leaving the place meant entering a universe without boundaries, real form or substance, a mysterious destination they only knew from a distance. Through television, through the carefully monitored Internet connection the communications room provided. From the gossip and stories, some true, some fantastic, of the other inmates there. Not that Kim and Mia talked to them much. They were different. Even Kaatje Lammers, who could so easily get them into trouble. Unlike them the others were sick.

  They waved back to the buildings as Klerk led them to his car, a shiny bright yellow SEAT parked behind the residential block.

  ‘Sit in the back,’ he ordered.

  ‘How far?’ Mia asked.

  ‘How long?’ Kim added.

  ‘A while.’

  ‘You said we could have watches,’ Kim reminded him.

  ‘I did.’

  He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out two cheap digital ones. Both pink. Kiddy things.

  ‘Also,’ Mia went on, ‘you promised—’

  ‘No more favours for the moment,’ Klerk said curtly, opening the back door one side, then the other. ‘Not until you’ve earned them.’

  He held up the bag. Kim took it and they climbed in.

  They didn’t really know what the village was like. They’d been there a couple of times when their parents and Jo were alive. Fun visits wandering round the narrow streets. But the institution never let them out, not even when some of the other patients were allowed controlled, supervised walks. They weren’t, Veerman always insisted, sufficiently ‘normalized’.

  Klerk got in the front and drove slowly down the long gravel drive to the gate. The man on the barrier knew they were coming. The nurse had to give him some paperwork all the same. He stared at the form and the signature of the director.

  The blue-and-white pole went up. The car nosed out onto the single-track lane. They didn’t say anything for a while. All this was so new.

  In a minute they were crawling through the narrow streets of Marken, noses to the glass. Tourists wandered round taking photographs. A woman was posing for them in traditional dress. Black skirt. A striped red blouse. A white mob cap. Black clogs.

  The girls giggled. Simon Klerk drove on.

  Past the houses, leaving the centre behind, they remembered something and turned to look back at the eastern finger of land at the edge of the island, pointing out into the larger lake of the Markermeer.

  ‘The horse!’ Kim cried. ‘I remember it now. The horse!’

  A tall white building nicknamed the Paard van Marken. A monumental lighthouse that seemed to be sprouting from a grand white wooden mansion, a stallion stretching its neck for the sky.

  ‘When we were tiny,’ Mia said. ‘We went there. Remember?’

  Klerk switched on the radio. Pop music.

  ‘No!’ the girls shrieked in unison. ‘Not that. Not that!’

  He shrugged, turned it off then drove to the long dyke road crossing the water back to the mainland, past yet more wind turbines.

  They stared at the green dam wall blocking the view and the cyclists on the bike path. The place seemed so flat, so devoid of any form, they had to imagine Volendam to the north, past the distant spike of another white lighthouse, much smaller than the Paard.

  Then the sea dyke ended and they were on land proper. The 311 from Amsterdam meandered towards them.

  ‘There’s a bus!’ Kim squealed and her sister shrieked too.

  ‘Girls!’ Klerk cried from behind the wheel. ‘Girls! It’s just a bus.’

  ‘I know,’ Kim answered.

  ‘But we haven’t seen one,’ her sister added. ‘Not since . . .’

  They went quiet and Simon Klerk didn’t push it.

  The yellow SEAT stuck to the main road for half a kilometre or more. A single-track lane came up on the left with a sign saying, ‘Cars and bicycles, local access only’.

  Klerk turned in. The way ahead was so narrow he could only drive at a snail’s pace. There were drainage dykes on both sides, flat green fields of pasture beyond them, low, modest bridges that led to sprawling meadows where scattered herds of cattle munched idly on lush grass.

  The sisters turned to the windows and stared up at the sky. It was a bright and beautiful day with puffy white clouds moving slowly east to west. Gulls hung in the air. As they passed a low hedge separating one bare field from the next a grey heron, all puffy feathers, descended towards the green channel next to them, stuck its long legs in the water and stabbed down, looking for prey.

  ‘We’ll never get there,’ Mia said. ‘Not at this rate.’

  ‘What’s the rush?’ Simon Klerk asked.

  About four hundred metres ahead lay a spinney of low trees, weeping willows by the narrow dyke next to a thicket of overgrown elder bushes. Behind stood what looked like a derelict farmhouse. They got to the drive. The rusty gate was half off its hinges. Klerk climbed out.

  While he was messing around Kim tried the doors. They were locked. She patted her jacket. Mia did the same and smiled.

  Ahead of them Klerk pushed down the gate then dragged it to one side. He came back to the car and drove over the wooden bridge. The tyres made a rhythmic sound across the planks.

  One, two, three. One, two, three, the sisters counted.

  He parked on the dried mud drive by the back door. Rotting furniture stood outside, fabric ripped, bare foam hanging out like torn flesh.

  The sisters sat and waited.

  Klerk leaned back in the driver’s seat then turned, a stupid grin on his face.

  ‘You remember what we agreed, girls? There’s a price. There’s a price for everything.’

  ‘Ja,’ they said together.

  ‘So who’s first?’

  The wind picked up. The weeping willows shifted under its breath. They were nowhere and knew it. No passing traffic down this remote lane. No one to see. No one to hear.

  ‘Me,’ Mia said in a quiet, flat voice. ‘But you have to open the doors.’

  He laughed at his own stupidity then found the button beneath the window. Something clicked. She stepped outside.

  This place didn’t smell like Marken at all. It had a rotten stink about it. Stagnant water. A blocked dyke. All the things you got on land, away from the lake that swept everything clean.

  ‘I’m waiting,’ Klerk cried as she stood by the car door seeing how the abandoned farmhouse was hidden from everywhere by the spinney’s green shade.

  ‘Sorry,’ she muttered and climbed in.

  ‘You should be grateful.’ He pointed at her in the passenger seat. ‘You will be too. The pair of you. If it wasn’t for me—’

  ‘We know, Simon,’ Kim insisted from the back. ‘You don’t need to tell us.’

  ‘We’re grateful,’ Mia added.

  His eyes were bright and anxious and greedy.

  ‘One word from me and you’re back in Marken. Or somewhere worse. Years before they let you out again. Years. They’ll split you up. Probably never see each other again.’

  ‘Very grateful,’ Mia repeated.

  ‘Get on with it then,’ Klerk ordered. ‘Had enough of your teasing.’ He nodded at the back seat. ‘And she’s straight after.’

  ‘Sure,’ Mia said and didn’t move.

  A sound then. Klerk couldn’t believe his ears. It was Kim behind him, singing in that pure clear voice of theirs. The kid’s tune they’d performed back in Marken.

  Draai het wieletje nog eens om.

  Turn the wheel around again.

  ‘For Christ’s sake,’ he grunted. Are you two little bitches listening to a word I—?’

  Then he saw the thing Kim was dragging out of her waistband, knew what it was straight away too. One of the knives the staff used in their private canteen. Metal, unlike the plastic cutlery they allowed the patients.

  This one looked brighter, sharper than any he’d ever seen, as if they’d been working on it for ages, planning for this moment.
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  ‘Girls—’

  Kim sang something else.

  Love is like a chain that binds me.

  Mia tapped the windscreen – one two three – and came in note perfect.

  Love is like a last goodbye.

  8

  As the summer sun faded over the water they waited by the main road for the bus from Marken to the city. There were two hundred euros in Simon Klerk’s wallet. Maybe nurses didn’t get paid much.

  ‘The pills,’ Kim said and both of them retrieved four weeks of medication carefully stashed inside old shampoo bottles, laughing as they emptied the multicoloured tablets on the grass.

  Twenty minutes later the bus arrived. Just two people on it with the driver. Four euros each for two tickets to Amsterdam. They sat together at the back as they drove though the flat green fields criss-crossed by glimmering channels of water.

  Waterland.

  Earth that once was sea until men came along and tamed the vast, relentless expanse of ocean, reclaiming the land as polder, kept whole by dykes and dams. Not that the water, the sweet green water, ever went away. They’d grown up with that idea, seen their father and his brother fish for the diminishing supply of eels, in the lake and in the dykes. Theirs was a world where solitary herons stood like grey guardians, spear-like beaks at the ready, always watching from the margins. Where life teemed beneath the emerald surface and nothing was quite what it seemed.

  Mia whispered in her sister’s ear as they approached the town of Monnickendam, tantalizingly close to home. She’d retrieved a memory from when they were tiny, a precious one, full of meaning. It was a warm day that last summer when they were out in the old Renault with their mother. Somewhere close to where the bus now ambled they saw them: a fat and happy duck with her chicks standing by the side of the road, waiting for a safe moment to cross.

  ‘You remember?’ Mia asked.

  ‘Of course I do!’ Kim answered, not cross, just offended by the thought she might have forgotten.

  The duck had a plump breast, puffed out proudly in front of her. The chicks looked like tiny black balls of furry feathers.

  Their mother had slowed the car then stopped. All three girls in the back had put their hands over their mouths to stifle their giggles as Freya wound down the window, stuck her head outside and called, in a firm but friendly voice, ‘After you, Mother Duck. Take care of your young ones.’