Little Sister

by David Hewson

  Brugman used to wind up the jerk who ran the shop with a simple, repetitive joke: if it was so smart why did the people coming and going always look like idiots?

  Seemed he had some more.

  His phone buzzed. The email sound.

  Brugman swore and checked the message.

  From: LittleJo2006@gmail.com

  To: DaNo1bassmann@kpn.com

  Remember us? The time has come. Little Jo.

  Nothing else but a photo he opened out of boredom, checked it then stuffed the phone back in his pocket. The picture was of three young girls on the Volendam waterfront, all fair-haired, all pretty. He looked up. The two across the road were older but they’d turned blonde somehow. And that didn’t seem possible at all.

  Three words came straight into Brugman’s head unbidden.

  The Golden Angels.

  The Timmers girls were part of the lost past not the desperate present. But now he looked and looked and two of them stared back at him across the quiet, cobbled street then shuffled off round the corner.

  It’ll all come back to haunt us one day.

  Did he say that? Or was it someone else?

  He didn’t remember things as well as he used to. But it was true all the same.

  20

  By nine Vos was back in the bar opposite his houseboat on the Prinsengracht. Sofia looked happy. Sam was up to his tricks, playing catch and tug with a customer Vos didn’t recognize, an American by the sound of it, perched on a rickety stool at the counter sipping at a beer.

  She came over with a drink and some food.

  ‘Take him home when you like. The little chap ought to be exhausted.’ She looked at Vos. ‘You are. Aren’t you?’

  He tried to smile. Something had been bugging him all the way back into the city. So he’d found his way into the admin office, talked to the lone officer on duty and got what he wanted transferred to one of the tablets the younger officers loved so much. The thing sat on the table now. Turned off. Vos didn’t like technology. All too often it seemed to serve up distraction when what you wanted was focus.

  ‘Long day,’ he said and left it at that.

  ‘I know you hate it when I say this, Pieter. But I do watch the news. Marken. Those two girls from that case years back. The Cupids. They said they were on the run or something.’

  ‘I can’t—’

  ‘I know you can’t talk about it. I was trying to tell you something.’

  He pulled up a chair and she sat down. They talked like this so rarely. He took her for granted. She didn’t seem to mind and he really couldn’t work out why.

  ‘Gert Brugman,’ Sofia said. ‘The singer. You know him?’

  ‘Who doesn’t? Has he been hanging round begging for work again?’

  The Drie Vaten was too small to host musical evenings. There were better bars in the Jordaan for that. But it didn’t stop some of the local bums trying to pick up money. Sofia Albers was a soft touch and everyone knew it.

  She reached over and took a sip of his beer then retrieved a piece of the liver sausage on his plate.

  ‘He was in here half an hour ago. Asking for you.’

  The man at the counter threw a rubber ball down the bar. Sam watched it bounce on the worn timber planks, gauging its trajectory, then set off after it, racing up and down the floor skidding on his claws. Maybe he needed to be taken to the grooming shop for a clip, fur and nails.

  ‘Gert Brugman doesn’t know me.’

  ‘Not by name. But he knows there’s a police officer from Marnixstraat uses this place. A senior one. Everyone does. He seemed anxious to talk to you.’ She pulled a piece of paper out of her pocket. ‘He left this.’

  A mobile number. She read his face and left him then. Vos tried to call but there was no answer, not even voicemail. Sam got bored with the game and did what he always did when he was tired and wanted to go home: came over and curled up in a ball beneath the table.

  Vos tried the number again then gave up. His head hurt. The beer wasn’t helping. Sofia came back with another one and he couldn’t stop himself taking a swig.

  ‘He looked worse than usual,’ she said. ‘Which is saying something. I think . . .’

  He reached out and put his hand on hers. She fell silent instantly. They didn’t touch like this.

  ‘Not now,’ Vos pleaded. ‘I need . . .’ Need what? ‘I need a line. A dividing line between what I do and who I am. This place is that line. Without it . . .’

  The terrier shuffled against his legs, sensing an awkward moment as always. Vos had never spoken to her quite like this before. She seemed surprised. Embarrassed too.

  The American at the counter finished his beer, threw some money on the bar and came over. He was a big man, built like a boxer but with a broad and genial face. He wore a suit without a tie. A businessman in town, Vos thought. Looking for a few quiet hours somewhere local.

  ‘Got to go, sweetheart,’ he said in good Dutch, with only the slightest accent. ‘See you tomorrow. Dinner in that place I told you.’ He glanced at Vos. ‘That’s still OK?’

  Sofia got up and he kissed her cheek.

  ‘Sure, Michael,’ she said. He nodded at Vos then went out into the warm night, ambling along the canal like any other visitor. Whistling. Vos could hear that through the open door.

  ‘I didn’t realize . . .’

  ‘He’s here for one of the banks. A nice man. Fun. From New York.’ She went to the bar and poured herself a small glass of wine. ‘A month. Maybe longer. He says he’s not married.’ She laughed. ‘Maybe he isn’t.’ She took a sip. ‘But it’s just a month. What the hell?’

  ‘You deserve better,’ he blurted out.

  Sofia Albers glared at him and said, ‘How would you know? Seriously, Pieter. How?’

  He got up from the table, gently extricating himself from the half-slumbering dog. Sam stood too and yawned. A loud noise for such a small creature.

  ‘You so want to fix things, don’t you?’ she said.

  ‘Not really. Gave that up years ago. I just try . . . try to stop them getting worse.’

  She came and picked up his glass and the empty plate.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said and couldn’t think of anything else. ‘Really. I just . . .’

  There was a moment of self-knowledge then. One he didn’t know whether to welcome or hate. He could cope with his private life. He could cope with work. But he couldn’t manage both. One part would always be falling to pieces somehow. He didn’t have the strength, the commitment or the patience to hold them all together.

  ‘Seven thirty in the morning, OK?’ he asked. ‘Breakfast? I can leave Sam then.’

  ‘Fine,’ she said and got her keys.

  He watched her lock up as he crossed the road to the boat. It was a beautiful evening. The city was quiet under a starry sky and crescent moon. Half a kilometre away at the head of Elandsgracht the corpse of Simon Klerk would be lying on a table in the Marnixstraat morgue, ready to be examined by the duty pathologist. A night team of officers would be scouring Waterland and Volendam to try to locate the place where he died and work out how his body managed to wind up on a solitary shore in Marken. Others were looking throughout Amsterdam for some sign of two young sisters who’d never set foot in the outside world in their adult lives.

  So many questions. So few answers.

  Sam trotted down the gangplank, waited for him to open the door, then ambled inside and went straight to his basket in the bows.

  ‘Good boy,’ Vos whispered, watching the terrier turn round and round in his bed before settling down, curled up, nose to tail, to sleep. ‘Lucky boy.’

  He picked up the tablet the admin officer had given him and, with no small amount of reluctance, switched it on. File deletion records from five years before. The narrative they seemed to tell appeared both obvious and unbelievable.

  There’s more than one story here.

  Dirk Van der Berg said that. One of the smartest, most honest men in Marnixstraat. He was us
ually right.

  Vos wondered what the sceptical, ever-inquisitive detective would make of the curious collection of records the office had come up with that evening.

  ‘Jesus, Frank,’ he whispered to no one in the half-dark. ‘What in God’s name were you thinking?’

  And why?

  21

  Wednesday. Nine in the morning. A week getting worse by the hour. Henk Veerman sat at the desk in his office; he could think of no other place to be. A few months short of five years he’d been in this job, promoted from deputy after the death of his predecessor. Five worthwhile years he thought, spent trying to put the place in order. He was fifty-eight. Another twenty-one months – he’d been counting – and he’d be able to take retirement, spend time the way he loved, out on the water on his yacht.

  His wife had succumbed to cancer two years earlier. There were no children, no real ties to keep him. In a sense there was nothing but the institution. Veerman lived in a wooden house in the village not far from the harbour where he kept his beloved twelve-metre yacht, a classic, built in the Arsenale of Venice three decades before. When retirement came he’d promised himself the dream he’d shared with his wife before she died. To sail the yacht across the Atlantic, all the way to the warm and sunny Caribbean. Perhaps they’d stay there for good, safe from bureaucracy and recriminations.

  The fantasy still lived on somewhere, though he knew he was not a good enough sailor to contemplate the crossing on his own. She was always better. Her strength and determination kept him going.

  Now, just when the light of release and freedom was due on the horizon, it seemed everything might be snatched from him. Veerman thought himself a good and decent man. He’d done his best with Marken. It wasn’t easy. Hendriks, his late predecessor, had seen to that.

  Stiff, feeling old and impotent, he got up and walked to the window. The spinney by the shore was still occupied by a small group from Marnixstraat’s forensic section. In the morning light they were clearing up, dismantling the tent erected around the spot where Simon Klerk’s body had been found. The wood had been searched meticulously. Before long, Veerman knew, Vos and his prying team would be back asking difficult questions, of staff and, at some stage, patients. There was a momentum to events. It felt as if a beast that had long slumbered was stirring. Marken was a juvenile establishment. That meant most of the patients Hendriks had dealt with were elsewhere, some in other institutions, a few back in the community. Only the Timmers sisters and one other young inmate had remained of late from the days of his predecessor.

  He stared at the waving trees by the bare shore. Even now he could pinpoint the one where he first saw Hendriks’ body swinging like a pendulum in the spring breeze. The police had come out and swiftly concluded the case was suicide. But that had been a different officer, quite unlike the sharp and persistent Vos. Ollie Haas, the one with local connections who’d handled the Timmers case five years earlier.

  Veerman hadn’t argued with the verdict. Hendriks, an aggressive, bad-tempered man, had been troubled, not that his deputy had fully understood why. Besides, he coveted the job. It paid more. There was real work to be done. Damaged adolescents to be . . . improved, if not entirely cured.

  A sudden movement caught his eye and he knew straight away who it was: the last remaining girl from Hendriks’ day. Kaatje Lammers, twenty years old now, incarcerated since she murdered her mother with a kitchen knife at the age of twelve. A short, dark-haired young woman, lean and athletic. Forever trying to start affairs with the other girls. Trouble in waiting. They let her roam the garden early in the morning, jogging, practising tai chi moves she’d learned from a book. The perimeter was safe. It was easier than keeping her cooped up. And even if she got out there was that long, solitary road across the dyke back to Waterland. The best protection Marken had.

  She was walking towards the police. Veerman grabbed his jacket and strode quickly downstairs.

  He caught her just before she reached the trees.

  A striking kid in a ragged white T-shirt, blue sports bra beneath, cut-off denim shorts. She slashed her own hair punk-style. Two months before she’d managed to scrawl an amateurish tattoo of a dragon on her right forearm using ink from a ballpoint pen and something sharp stolen from the kitchen. Visser hadn’t wanted her punished for that. It was, she said, a sign the girl was building her own identity.

  ‘Mr Director,’ Kaatje said, stopping, out of breath.

  Veerman pulled out a pack of cigarettes and offered her one.

  ‘Don’t smoke,’ she told him. ‘Bad for you, isn’t it? I’d have thought a doctor would know that.’

  ‘I’m not a doctor, am I?’

  ‘Just the man who runs the place. Who’s responsible.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Poor Simon, eh.’ She glanced at the police in the woods. ‘I wonder who was responsible for that.’

  ‘So do I,’ he answered.

  ‘The police will find out, Director Veerman. They always do. They did when I stuck a knife into my mum. Mind you, it wasn’t hard.’

  ‘Violence is a solution to nothing,’ Veerman told her and hated the words the moment they came out of his mouth.

  She put her skinny arms out like bony wings, hands on hips, grinning at him.

  ‘But that’s not right, is it? I mean, countries fight wars and tell you they were doing the right thing. If someone screws you around and no one gives a shit . . .what else are you supposed to do? Ignore them? Walk away? Pretend it never happened?’

  He wasn’t going to be led down that blind alley.

  ‘The police will be interviewing people here soon.’

  ‘I know.’ The grin got wider. ‘I was about to save them some time.’

  ‘Those people are from forensic. They’re not the ones.’

  She scowled and said nothing.

  ‘They’re bound to want to talk to you. About Klerk. About the sisters.’

  She was beaming again, bright white teeth glinting at him.

  ‘Mia and Kim have done a runner, haven’t they? Did they kill dear old Simon?’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t think—’

  ‘I don’t think so either, Mr Director. They’re a couple of butterflies. Daft in the head.’ She tapped her skull. ‘Kim’s the daftest. She thinks that dead sister of theirs is still around somewhere. Did you know that? Kim can hear her. Mia . . .’ She chuckled. ‘I reckon she just goes along with it. Saves trouble. And we all like saving ourselves from that, don’t we?’

  No, Veerman admitted to himself. He didn’t know about that. Visser, if she did, should have told him.

  Kaatje bunched her right fist until the knuckles went white and said, ‘If it was me out there with him . . . I could have done it.’

  ‘Why?’ He had to ask.

  ‘You don’t notice anything, do you? Sitting up in that office of yours. Turn up at nine every morning. On your way home at five. What do you reckon happens when you’re not around?’

  Veerman didn’t want to think about that. He’d done his very best.

  ‘Kaatje. What happened back when Hendriks was in charge . . . we stopped that. We put a halt to things. The visitors . . .’

  ‘Oh.’ She laughed, mocking him. ‘It was just the visitors now, was it?’

  ‘When they talk to you,’ he went on, ‘just stick to the facts. If you can help them . . . if you’ve any idea where Mia and Kim have gone . . .’

  ‘Facts?’ She looked around, glancing at the forensic team clearing up by the shore. ‘When do I get out of here, Director Veerman?’

  He knew this was coming. She asked every time.

  ‘Your next review’s in a year. If everything goes well—’

  ‘A year?’ she snapped. ‘You want another year of my life for what I did? My mum was a heartless bitch. She never loved me. Any more than you lot.’

  ‘There are rules. We don’t make them. I’ve explained this before. I’m sorry.’

  She cocked her head to one sid
e and scratched at the amateurish tattoo.

  ‘Sorry? I don’t think so.’

  ‘Everyone here has your best interests at heart.’

  ‘Then let me out. Give me my life back. I’m owed one. Same as everybody else.’

  Something moved on the water. A distant sail, a hull bending with the stiff lake breeze.

  ‘A week, Director. I’d like that review in a week. You can fix that, can’t you?’

  She leered at him. He couldn’t wait for the day he’d never have to deal with problems like Kaatje Lammers again. There was no redemption for some of them. They relished who and what they were.

  ‘I’ll see what I can do.’

  ‘Not good enough. I want to hear it now.’

  That bright smile stayed on him until he said, ‘Fine. I’ll talk to Dr Visser. I’m sure we can manage it somehow.’

  ‘You do that,’ she said, then brought up her arms, waggled them around in the morning air like a child, winked at him and started jogging again, back towards the car park and the patients’ building.

  Veerman couldn’t take his eyes off the lake. It was one of his neighbour’s boats from the Marken harbour leaning into the wind. A beautiful day for sailing. It looked as if it was heading for Lelystad. In this weather it could be moored at Texel by the North Sea for lunch.

  A police radio chanted something from the spinney. Kaatje Lammers waved at him from the porch by the residential block.

  Freedom.

  That was all she craved. So they did have something in common.

  His phone beeped with a message. Veerman closed his eyes and steeled himself. The damned texts had been coming in for more than day now. He knew he ought to call the number. Get this straight. Tell the bitches – it had to be them – to leave him alone. Go to the police. Wait for some other unfortunate to take responsibility for their sad and wasted lives.

  But he didn’t have the courage and perhaps they knew.

  He pulled the phone out of his pocket and looked at the text. The same as before. There were thirteen of them all told. Every crowing word identical.

  Good Day, Director Veerman. How are you? Well I hope. We must speak soon. Little Jo.