Little Sister

by David Hewson

  He spat out a curse and called Visser. She should have been in work by now.

  Her home phone rang and rang. No answer. Then he tried her mobile and just got voicemail.

  ‘Jesus,’ Veerman whispered. ‘Where are you, Irene?’

  22

  Vos had made his mind up about the morning before he set foot inside Marnixstraat. Van der Berg set off for Volendam to do what he did so well: sniff and fish around. Bakker was set to work going through the details of the night team reports. He made a few calls of his own.

  After an hour he was summoned to De Groot’s office. The commissaris was a tall, imposing man with a jowly face, a full head of black hair and a heavy moustache. They’d known each other for almost twenty years since Vos joined as a cadet in his late teens. Mostly the relationship had been amicable. Vos and Liesbeth used to go round to the De Groot family home in De Pijp for dinner when they were still a couple. It was De Groot who’d engineered Vos’s return to the police after the doll’s house case that led to the rescue of their daughter. There was a long history here. Friendship too, though one occasionally tempered by a sense of distance. De Groot was upright, predictable, a man built for management. Vos none of these things.

  The commissaris ushered him into his plush office overlooking the canal and proudly took out his phone to show him some photos from the previous day’s wedding. Vos remembered Sandra, De Groot’s daughter, as a girl often, gangly legs, a silly laugh, thick spectacles. Now she looked lovely in a white wedding dress posing next to a handsome groom. Even on the small screen it seemed she’d been photographed like a fashion feature out of a glossy magazine.

  ‘I’ll be paying for this until I retire,’ De Groot noted with a shrug. ‘But she’s happy. He seems a nice enough fellow. Got a steady job. Insurance or something. It’s the happiness that counts. That’s all.’

  Vos said the first thing that came into his head. It sounded bland and predictable but that seemed to be expected on these occasions.

  ‘You could have called me,’ the commissaris added. ‘Those Timmers girls missing. Now we have a murder.’

  He took a seat, thought for a moment then said, ‘I didn’t want to disturb you. We all deserve time off. Besides . . .’ He gave De Groot a run-through of the briefing he’d got from the night people. Forensic hadn’t needed long to decide how Simon Klerk had died: a single shotgun blast to the head. They’d got nowhere with working out where he was killed or how his body was shipped to Marken. No one had seen any sign of the Timmers sisters.

  ‘Early days,’ the commissaris said. ‘Keep me informed.’

  ‘Of course I will.’

  De Groot seemed deeply uncomfortable, which was not something Vos saw often.

  ‘Let’s put everything we can into finding those two girls. The sooner we get them back in custody the sooner we can all sleep at night.’

  ‘It’s not as straightforward as that.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Mia and Kim Timmers have spent the last decade of their lives, since they were eleven, locked in an institution. They can’t know how to drive. I doubt they have a clue how to handle a boat. Where would they get a shotgun? How would they know what to do with it?’

  De Groot’s face fell.

  ‘Those two killed that musician. Did some pretty disgusting things to him. If—’

  ‘Ten years ago. That’s irrelevant to the present case.’

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘Whatever happened there—’

  ‘We know what happened,’ De Groot cut in.

  There was an important point here, Vos thought. It needed to be made.

  ‘Whatever it was we failed them. They were children. Kids aren’t born bad. We make them that way.’

  De Groot scowled.

  ‘Please. You sound like a social worker.’

  ‘Perhaps I do,’ Vos agreed. ‘It doesn’t matter. They left Marken with Simon Klerk. Three hours later they turned up in Amsterdam alone and then they vanished. I can’t believe Klerk was dumped on the beach in daylight. So whoever took him there did it in the dark.’

  De Groot said, ‘They could have gone back.’

  ‘They could. But how? Not by bus. We’ve checked the CCTV with the company. Someone would have to drive them. Any way you look at it there must be a third party involved. They couldn’t do all this themselves. They can’t be hiding out in the city on their own either, if that’s what they’re doing.’

  The commissaris didn’t like what he was hearing but he kept quiet.

  ‘I want to pull in Ollie Haas for questioning at some stage,’ Vos went on. ‘We ought to talk to Jaap Blom too.’

  ‘The politician? What the hell’s he got to do with it?’

  ‘Maybe nothing. He was the manager of The Cupids. He was there the night those people were murdered. It was his evidence that said Rogier Glas was innocent. Any objections?’

  A big man, De Groot had a distinct way of signalling his disapproval without saying a word. Vos witnessed it now. That long pained sigh, a folding of arms.

  ‘I thought you said that Volendam nightmare wasn’t a part of this.’

  ‘I said I doubt those girls murdered Simon Klerk. I’ve still got questions.’

  Vos told him the truth. There were aspects of the Timmers murders that were unclear and he felt they might be relevant to the case. Perhaps Haas could clear up a few.

  ‘Haven’t you got enough on your hands?’ the commissaris asked. ‘A murder. Two missing killers. I gather Klerk’s wife has been in an interview room downstairs since the crack of dawn shouting the place down. She’s demanding to know what’s going on. I’d like you to tell her.’

  ‘I can’t fix what I don’t understand. I’m not asking for Haas and the politician in here now. Just giving you notice that at some stage. Probably—’

  De Groot’s temper snapped.

  ‘What the hell is this? The nurse was killed two days ago. When those sisters went missing. That’s the case. Not Volendam a decade past. This is about now. Not then.’

  There was no good time to introduce this. So Vos brought up the missing records.

  The commissaris just shrugged and said, ‘Old files do get archived.’

  ‘These weren’t archived. They were deleted. For good, as far as we can see. Your name’s on the register. It says you asked for it.’ He passed over the tablet he’d got from records. ‘Just after you became commissaris. That’s your signature, isn’t it?’

  De Groot looked puzzled as he took the device and went through the documents with a nonchalant sweep of his fingers.

  ‘You’d be amazed how much stupid paperwork I deal with in a week. None of this rings a bell. Why would I ask for records to be deleted?’

  ‘I’ve no idea. The Timmers case was dormant. Ollie Haas had just retired. That doesn’t mean it deserved a burial. It is your signature, isn’t it?’

  ‘This was years ago,’ De Groot said with a frown.

  ‘Five.’

  ‘You can’t expect me to remember every damned form that comes across this desk.’ He pushed the tablet to one side. ‘I’ll look into it. I’ll talk to Blom’s office. You talk to Mrs Klerk.’

  ‘The files—’

  ‘I told you,’ De Groot retorted. ‘I’ll look into it. I’ll deal with Ollie Haas as well. These are side issues. Track down those girls and you’ll find who killed that nurse. One way or another. It’s simple, isn’t it?’

  No, Vos thought. Anything but.

  Still, he left the room and went back to the office. Laura Bakker had been busy. The walls were papered with photos, some recent, some old. Young girls in skimpy costumes on the seafront in Volendam. Big men, confident men bustling round them near a stage. More photos of The Cupids from their formation in the early Seventies, through their rise and steady fall. Hair. Clothes. The changing expressions, from bright youth to forced middle-aged smiles. They all told a story.

  There was no news yet from Van der Berg. In the office Vos had ten detecti
ves, six men, four women, working away at the back of the room, chasing up information from the night team, making calls.

  He walked over and joined them. He’d never liked any of the music The Cupids made. It was too bland, too conformist and popular for him. But he’d always thought they served a purpose. Working-class men from a modest town by the water. Fishermen turned musicians. They made a statement: we can compete with the British and the Americans when it comes to selling records. Even if it’s just predictable pap.

  Now these men – Rogier Glas with his Zapata moustache and pockets full of sweets, Gert Brugman grinning as he hugged his Fender bass, Frans Lambert, a tall and muscular man holding a pair of drumsticks as if they were weapons – looked odd. Anachronistic. Out of place. Vos had a private theory that rock musicians ought to hang up their spurs when they turned thirty-five. Mostly it just got demeaning after that. These three looked as if they could handle the embarrassment. Perhaps even welcome it.

  Bakker pinned up another photo. Ollie Haas, an officer no one had ever liked, not least because he always seemed to get out from under his many failed investigations. Then, next to him, two pictures of someone who didn’t seem to fit at all. Jaap Blom a decade before outside his cafe and recording studio in Volendam. More recently taking his deputy’s seat in The Hague.

  She stuck up the last of the photos. Taken the day before on the strand at Marken, a naked body, head shot away, half-buried in the shingle.

  ‘More than one story here,’ Vos murmured, remembering what Dirk Van der Berg had said the previous day.

  A sound behind and then a scream. Vos turned as Sara Klerk pushed past him, jabbing a finger at the pictures of her dead and bloodied husband. She began to shriek, no words, only fear and anger.

  ‘Oh God,’ Bakker muttered. ‘I’m sorry . . .’

  Vos said nothing, just got an arm in front of the woman, looked her in the eye.

  ‘Mrs Klerk . . . We need to talk. Please.’

  She wasn’t crying. More mad than grieving.

  ‘I said I’m sorry,’ Bakker repeated.

  ‘You did,’ he agreed and coaxed the woman back into the interview room next door. There he sat her down and asked one of the uniformed officers to get her a coffee and anything she wanted to eat.

  ‘I’ll be with you as soon as I can.’

  ‘Now—’ the woman demanded.

  ‘As soon as I can,’ he repeated.

  23

  Hour after hour they’d spent in Marken, hogging one of the two computers in the community room, hunting, hunting, hunting. That bright morning after breakfast they begged Vera to let them try her old PC. They were bored. They wouldn’t do anything wrong. They needed some release.

  She glanced at them over the bacon and eggs then said OK, once she’d put a few filters in place. The thing wasn’t broken at all.

  They went upstairs while she did it. After fifteen minutes she called them down, told them to be good girls because that was in their nature. She had to go out for an hour or two. An appointment with the doctor, she said with a scowl. She didn’t seem quite as stern. Or perhaps something worried her.

  All the same she locked the front door when she left.

  Straight away they went to the computer to see what was there. Mia typed, Kim gave the orders, same as she did in Marken. Lots of things seemed blocked as they had been there too. But they could get to Wikipedia and for Kim, locked in the institution, that vast and rambling universe had become as real as the world itself.

  ‘Me,’ she said and ordered her sister out of the chair. Mia moved to the adjoining seat and watched her take the keyboard, knowing what she’d soon be searching for.

  ‘We’ve done all that,’ she complained.

  Kim wasn’t listening. Searching, stumbling from link upon link, meandering byway followed by pointless dead end, only to retrace her steps once more and find somewhere new to become lost in all that useless ocean of information.

  She’d started the way she always did, by typing ‘three’ then seeing where serendipity took them.

  Three blind mice.

  Three primary colours.

  The Rule of Thirds that gave a painting its perfect, pleasing visual form.

  The trinity of three, Father, Son and Holy Ghost.

  Jesus was visited by three wise men. He was thirty-three when he died and rose again on the third day.

  There were twenty-seven books in the New Testament which is three times three times three. Three times Jesus prayed in Gethsemane before he was seized.

  The pagans followed the three-fold law that stipulated everything a person put into the world, good or evil, positive or negative, would be returned to them three times over.

  ‘There,’ Kim said, catching sight of another link, pointing at it. ‘That’s new.’

  ‘Nothing’s new,’ Mia said with a sigh. ‘It’s all just . . .stuff.’

  Kim’s busy fingers ran across the keys. Another entry. A form of poetry now, the tercet. Three lines of verse, rhyming in a triplet.

  And this,’ she said, placing a pale, thin finger on the screen.

  The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;

  He watches from his mountain walls,

  And like a thunderbolt he falls.

  They read the text beneath. Alfred, Lord Tennyson. ‘The Eagle’.

  And like a thunderbolt he falls,’ Kim whispered. ‘“He”. Why’s it always a “he”?’

  ‘It’s just a stupid poem,’ Mia said.

  Kim gazed at her and there was something new between them at that moment. Something hostile.

  Are you done?’ Mia asked. ‘Can I try now?’

  Kim got up. They swapped seats. Not a word spoken.

  Mia sat down, closed Wikipedia, opened a new window. She wanted to know how far Vera’s filters worked and whether they could circumvent them.

  ‘What are you looking for?’ Kim asked.

  ‘Some news.’ They never followed that in Marken. There didn’t seem any point. That world ended at the pebble shore, the high wire fence, the guarded gate. Nothing outside mattered.

  Kim put her hands on the keyboard and stopped her sister typing.

  ‘Why?’ she asked. ‘What’s that to us?’

  In Marken it was easy to pretend there were no differences between them. Two sisters, a third still alive in Kim’s head. In a way Little Jo had grown up while they stayed young. Not innocent. Not quite.

  ‘Because we need to know,’ Mia said and forced her hands away.

  Before Kim could object, Mia found what she wanted. A new site. Familiar pictures there.

  Simon Klerk, smiling in his nurse’s uniform. A picture of them, ten years old. Perhaps Director Veerman had nothing better.

  ‘Dead,’ Mia whispered.

  ‘Best thing for him.’

  Kim cocked her head, smiled the innocent, smug, cheeky smile of an eleven-year-old then said, in a high and childish voice, ‘Now we can do more than sing, big sister. Once we get rid of Vera we can go where we like. Do what we like. The three of us. Together.’

  Then she sang two lines from a long-lost hymn. Faltering soprano, so much higher than her customary range. The way Little Jo would have sung it once upon a time.

  Praise the Lord through Sister Death,

  From whose kiss no man may flee.

  Again, even higher. Praise the Lord through Sister Death . . .

  Mia reached forward and gently placed her palm over her sister’s mouth.

  The singing stopped.

  ‘Please,’ Mia begged. ‘No . . .’

  With one wild jerk of her arm Kim swept her hand away.

  ‘Don’t do that again, Sister,’ she snarled. ‘Not to me.’

  24

  Go fishing, Vos had told him. So that’s what Dirk Van der Berg did. First thing that hot summer morning he drove out of the city into Waterland, following the Marken bus all the way until it veered off to the right and left him with a clear run for Volendam.

  Like most Ams
terdammers he knew the place more through reputation than experience. It was somewhere for tourists and the fans who followed the Palingsound bands. Sometimes, if he and his wife had visitors, they’d take them out to the quiet green pastures around the town and treat them to some cheese in its quieter, posher neighbour, Edam. But mostly it was a foreign spot. A place where city police rarely ventured. There was reason enough, he guessed. Plenty of dope and the odd outbreak of violence from time to time. Some of the locals had a reputation for dealing with trouble themselves, not leaving it to the authorities.

  That suited both parties usually. But not now.

  He parked his car as close to the waterfront as he could and read the file he’d brought with him. Since Marnixstraat’s documentation on the Timmers case was almost non-existent he’d pulled out photocopies of the press coverage. It was wild. A well-known musician had been murdered. For a few days he was suspected of killing father, mother and daughter of a local fishing family. Then that case petered out under Ollie Haas’s clumsy leadership. The only certainty that seemed to remain afterwards had to do with the two surviving triplets, Mia and Kim. Just eleven years old and they’d murdered a fading pop star called Rogier Glas with a savagery that seemed impossible in children.

  The paper said The Cupids were known throughout Waterland for their kindness, their support of local charities, the way they played for free at old people’s homes and hospitals. How Rogier Glas was always helping at youth clubs and schools, pockets brimming with sweets, always ready with a kind donation. Their international careers may have vanished, but in Volendam they remained local heroes. Not a sniff of scandal about them.

  Van der Berg read that part and took it with a pinch of salt. Show business had a few saints in his experience, but they were rare. The idea three of them might be former fishermen from Volendam . . .

  He wasn’t a cynical man by nature. Still the idea seemed plain wrong.

  A woman went past in traditional costume, clogs and hat, long black-and-white dress, headed for the photo station where the tourists were now assembling near the harbour. The locals here seemed ordinary people. Bored people, the way they often were in areas that depended on the tourist dollar for survival. The only ones who got rich off the visitors were those who owned the hotels and restaurants and controlled the local economy. The workers struggled by on minimum wage mostly, and benefits during the long, sparse winter.