Little Sister

by David Hewson

  ‘Correct. They were my . . . project. From day one. I thought I’d done a decent enough job. Seems I was wrong.’

  The absence of papers from Ollie Haas’s investigation was infuriating. Vos wanted a grip on what had happened then. There seemed no way to gain it.

  ‘Do you think they killed the musician?’ he asked. ‘What was his name?’

  ‘Rogier Glas,’ she said straight away. Then she reached for the drink again. ‘What makes you think they didn’t? The police—’

  ‘Forget about what the police told you. What did the girls say?’

  There was a hard and sceptical look in her eyes.

  ‘You want the truth? For the first eighteen months I worked with them they said nothing at all. Not a word. Not to me. Or anyone else.’

  ‘Nothing—’

  ‘Nothing. They were the most traumatized kids I’ve ever dealt with. They’d hold hands all the time, whisper to one another. Eat together. Sleep in the same bed. Go to the showers, the bathroom, walk . . . everything, just the two of them. And they’d sing. At times you’d see them stand around as if . . .’

  A long sigh. She closed her eyes and rolled her head back.

  ‘It was as if they really believed they were talking to their dead sister. Little Jo. They thought she was there. It wasn’t pretending. It was real for them.’ She shuddered. ‘Sometimes they’d behave as if she was in the room and I wasn’t. It scared me for a while, to be honest. They scared me.’

  He tried to take this in.

  ‘What made them talk in the end?’

  ‘Patience. Sympathy. Persistence. And when they did, the last thing I ever asked them about was Rogier Glas and what happened that night. Why? What was the point? They’d been to court. They’d been handed down their sentence. If they wanted to talk it was their choice. And they never exercised it. Of course bloody Veerman brought it all up when we interviewed them for release on Monday. He wanted to hear them admit they’d killed him. Fool . . .’

  ‘Why?’

  The look again. Sour and disappointed.

  ‘Isn’t it obvious? Because we had to let them put all that behind them. It was their challenge. Their choice. I couldn’t counsel those kids. They had to release whatever it was hanging around inside. Not that—’

  Bakker appeared at the door, gesturing for him. He got up and she whispered, ‘You’re going to have to talk to De Groot.’

  Vos nodded at her to stay with Visser then grabbed the phone and parked himself out of earshot in a small side room with a desk and a computer.

  ‘I’m in the middle of an interview—’

  ‘One that answers a few questions, I hope.’

  ‘We’ll see.’

  ‘Jesus, Pieter. Don’t go all smart on me now. Just find those girls. Nail this murder . . . murders. Christ – their uncle too?’

  ‘It’s too early to jump to conclusions.’

  A long pause and then De Groot started on what he really wanted to say. He’d spoken to Ollie Haas. The former brigadier had admitted deleting the Timmers files using De Groot’s name. He was scared that if someone came back to check them he’d lose his pension.

  ‘How?’ Vos asked.

  ‘What do you mean how?’

  ‘How did he get into the system, forge your signature . . . do all that?’

  De Groot groaned.

  ‘He’s made a statement admitting it. That’s good enough for me. You don’t need to involve him. Jaap Blom’s got nothing to do with this. I’m telling you . . . telling you. Find those girls. Bring them in. Close the case.’

  ‘I don’t think it’s that simple—’

  ‘If you tell me that one more time I’ll hand this over to someone who gets it. Do I make myself clear?’

  The records were on the network. Someone with the right clearance could organize for them to be deleted. Perhaps even put De Groot’s signature there. He still wondered: how exactly?

  ‘Perfectly,’ Vos agreed. ‘I’ll be back in an hour or so. We can talk—’

  ‘Not tonight. I have other plans. Just do what I asked, will you? For once.’

  Visser’s voice was rising in the next room. Vos ended the call and went in. Bakker had told the woman about her phone being found in the house where Klerk and Stefan Timmers died. The psychiatrist was back at the gin, starting to shriek.

  ‘We need to know,’ Bakker yelled at her. ‘Just tell us. Your phone was there. Where were you?’

  He took a seat and asked Visser to sit down.

  ‘We do need to know,’ he agreed. ‘We’re not leaving until we do.’

  37

  On the way out of the house Kim had gone through Vera’s bag and stolen her phone. There was no lock on it, no password. So, seated in a small park next to a busy kids’ playground, she played around with the thing.

  Her sister was the clever one, not that Kim ever acknowledged it. Mia would quietly, cautiously think through the few decisions they’d faced in Marken. What to do of an evening, which shampoo to use, the right girls to befriend. Few in Mia’s case, though Kim was more garrulous and open. She’d teamed up with Kaatje Lammers a couple of times, got into plenty of trouble that way too.

  Mia disapproved of Kaatje. But it never came to an argument. They were the same. They were different. That was how sisters were. If Kim was headstrong and unpredictable at times, Mia’s common sense and careful judgement brought equilibrium to their lives.

  And now . . .

  Now Mia would be looking for her somewhere in this vast and unknown city. Kim felt guilty for putting her through that ordeal. She’d make up for it before long.

  Vera’s phone was cheap but recent. Plenty of texts. They all seemed to be from the same number.

  Every message was terse and to the point.

  The money will be there as promised.

  The girls should arrive on Monday night.

  Buy blonde wigs. Let them wear them only when I say.

  Always the one short name at the end: Jo.

  What memories she had of her dead sister were now so insubstantial she wasn’t sure they were real at all. Little Jo was small, so short she looked more like a younger sister next to her and Mia. But she made up for her size in character. Always arguing, always pushing. Mia did as she was told mostly. But Kim, that child Kim, was always the first to give in, the one to do whatever they wanted because that way came love and affection, and sometimes a trifling reward.

  But Jo took every last thing their mother and father said as a challenge to be tested. Ignored, for the most part. And if a row ensued she’d try to win it by setting one against the other. Freya Timmers being the victor usually since she was the real boss.

  Little Jo had her mother’s fire. The voice too, pitch-perfect on every note. It was possible . . .

  Kim closed her eyes with a sudden stab of pain just recollecting how things were.

  It was possible, perhaps even probable, that Little Jo would have bossed them all in the end. And perhaps now did somehow.

  She read the texts again. All so short and practical. Like a general issuing orders to the troops.

  Then Kim pressed the phone button next to the message, held the handset to her ear and listened to it ring.

  The line was poor. A hesitant female voice said, ‘Ja?’ Or maybe, ‘Jo.’

  One word. Spoken so quickly she couldn’t begin to put a face to it, an age, anything.

  Shaking, eyes beginning to fill with tears, Kim tried to speak.

  The line stayed silent.

  Then finally the words came.

  ‘Jo. This is Kim.’ The words felt heavy and awkward in her mouth. ‘Kim. Your sister. Kim.’

  She thought she could hear someone breathing. After that there was a click and the line went dead.

  Kim stared at the handset. Shouted at it. Screamed.

  Here was something that separated her from her sister. A temper, bright red and violent at times.

  Kids were watching from the playground, legs dang
ling idly on swings, leaning against the slides and rides.

  She didn’t care. Jo, Little Jo, was a bitch at times. They never said that, not after the black night. But it was true. She was no Golden Angel. None of them were.

  There was a girl there, small, blonde-haired, on her own, no one talking to her, bored, kicking at thin air on a bench. No more than ten or eleven. Skinny arms, skinny legs, pale, sour face that stared at her with a look that seemed to say she never smiled at all.

  Like Jo.

  Just like her, Kim thought.

  38

  Where were you?

  It was the simplest of questions and prompted the simplest of answers.

  Irene Visser sat in a chair nursing her gin and tonic in one hand, toying with her thin fair hair with the other, not looking at them directly, then said, ‘I was here. At home. On my own. Reading. Watching TV.’ The glass went up. ‘Probably had a drink too.’

  ‘Can anyone corroborate that?’ Bakker wondered.

  ‘Did I not say I was on my own?’

  ‘No phone calls? No visitors?’

  Visser sighed.

  ‘This is very tedious, you know.’

  Vos said there was no doubt. They’d found her phone at the farmhouse. Not far from the kitchen where Simon Klerk and Stefan Timmers were killed.

  She paused for a while, thinking, then said, ‘Not possible.’

  ‘Your phone,’ Bakker repeated. ‘We checked—’

  ‘No.’ The woman looked baffled. ‘My phone’s here. I haven’t been out to . . . where is this place?’

  ‘Waterland,’ Vos said. ‘The middle of nowhere.’

  ‘I have not been to the middle of nowhere. The phone’s in my bag in the other room. Whatever you found . . .’

  There was a sound in Vos’s pocket. He pulled out his mobile, determined to kill the call if it was De Groot again. Instead it was Koeman so he got up and went into the adjoining kitchen to answer.

  ‘I can show you,’ Visser said from behind. ‘If you don’t believe me.’

  She was headed for the door when Koeman’s voice came on the line.

  ‘Gert Brugman keeps calling,’ Koeman said. ‘The Cupids guy. He thinks the sisters are pestering him.’

  ‘Wonderful. Anything from the farmhouse?’

  Koeman growled.

  ‘I don’t know half the forensic out there. They’re from Rotterdam, aren’t they? What do I do about this Brugman idiot?’

  Vos asked what the musician had to say.

  ‘Lots, not that much of it makes sense. He reckons the Timmers girls came and stood outside his house last night. Then they walked off.’

  ‘That’s it? Does he know where they went?’

  ‘No. He was very keen to give us a description. Blonde hair. Like they were as kids. Just grown up, he reckons.’

  ‘Tell him someone will be in touch in the morning.’

  ‘He won’t like it.’

  ‘Jesus . . . we’ve got two murders! All he’s saying is two young women stood outside his house? That’s it?’

  ‘That’s it,’ Koeman agreed.

  ‘I don’t have time for this,’ Vos told him and cut the call.

  Bakker was still checking her notes, pretending she hadn’t been listening.

  ‘Lots of people have more than one phone,’ she said. ‘I just talked to Aisha and asked her to check the call log on the one she found.’ Bakker looked up at him, bafflement on her pale face. ‘There’s a gap of almost two weeks. Up until then it was being used on a daily basis. After that nothing until one call two nights ago. Odd . . .’

  ‘No it isn’t,’ Vos said with a sigh. ‘Where is she?’

  Bakker looked puzzled.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because clearly Visser either lost the damned phone. Or someone . . . the sisters . . . stole it.’

  ‘You’d report a stolen phone.’

  ‘Where—’

  A sudden recollection then. When they walked in he’d seen a small leather suitcase, expensive and bulging at the seams, parked in a side room by the door.

  ‘God I’m getting stupid—’

  Outside an engine revved wildly.

  Vos raced to the hall.

  The case was gone. As Vos snatched open the door they saw her Alfa vanishing down the road.

  Vos strode to the car. Bakker fell in the passenger seat.

  ‘Can we catch her?’ she asked.

  ‘We don’t need to. It’s Marken. Call ahead to the farmhouse. Get a squad car positioned at the end of the dyke road. They put that institution here for a reason. You can’t escape an island easily.’

  39

  It was getting dark. A dying evening sun was casting the last of its golden stain across the lake. Vos drove through the winding streets of Marken, Bakker clung to the door handle as they sped after Irene Visser.

  The psychiatrist knew the way out of this warren of medieval lanes. Vos didn’t and he’d lost her already. This didn’t worry him. As he’d told Bakker, there was just one way out, along the narrow road that sat atop the thin finger of dyke linking it to Waterland.

  ‘Call Dirk,’ he ordered. ‘See what he’s got at Stefan’s place.’

  ‘I will if you keep your eyes on where we’re going—’

  The car swerved past a line of tiny terrace houses and then hit a broader thoroughfare. There were street lights running in a line ahead. The dyke road.

  In another timbered terrace across the water in Volendam Van der Berg’s phone rang.

  ‘You sound busy,’ Van der Berg said.

  ‘Vos wants to know what you’ve got.’

  The detective looked around him. The place had bachelor written all over it. Unkempt, grubby, chaotic. He was in the low dining room trying to ignore the stale smell there. There were what Van der Berg took to be dusty eel or crab pots on the walls. Old photos of men by fishing boats. None of them smiling.

  Van der Berg was getting a feel for Stefan Timmers already.

  ‘A grotty dump belonging to a sad and lonely man, I’d guess. Give me some time. A bit of help would be nice. Can you get Aisha over here?’

  Vos accelerated. There were red lights up ahead, travelling very quickly. Bakker called Aisha Refai, hooked her in to the call with Van der Berg and said, ‘If you can pull yourself out of Waterland, Dirk needs you over in Volendam.’

  The forensic officer’s answer took her breath away. Most of the team were back at Marnixstraat. They’d taken Stefan Timmers’ body out of the farmhouse and left a skeleton crew there to await a fresh look in the morning.

  ‘That was quick,’ Bakker said.

  ‘It was what the new boss wanted,’ Aisha answered. ‘Give me an address in Volendam. Anything to get out of this place.’

  Van der Berg passed on the location of the house and Bakker left them to it.

  ‘They’ve taken the body away,’ she said as Vos closed on the Alfa ahead.

  ‘Already?’

  ‘Sounds as if most of the team are back at base.’

  He wasn’t interested and told her to check there was a squad car blocking the road as it came off the dyke.

  ‘I did ask for that!’

  ‘I know, Laura. Make sure it’s there. And visible. She’s drunk, remember?’

  Dead drunk, Vos thought. The words just came into his head.

  40

  Straight after Van der Berg came off the call with Laura Bakker his phone rang again.

  ‘Dirk?’ It was Aisha Refai. ‘I’m on the way. Where is this place exactly? I don’t get it on the satnav.’

  He listened to her talk to whoever was driving the car then told her: a tiny black-timbered cottage behind the waterfront. Not easy to park near. She’d have to find space in the centre of the town.

  ‘Do you have anything for me?’

  He looked round the living room and thought: not much. At the end of the room there was a narrow eave and a tiny door. Once upon a time it probably gave onto a storeroom or a smokehouse. The fisher
men here were famous for catching eels. Lots of them used to smoke them at home and sell direct on the street. But those days were gone. The eels were fast disappearing. Big companies had come in to catch the tourist trade, importing their fish from all over Europe.

  ‘I’m sure we’ll find something when you get here,’ he said.

  ‘You mean . . . no.’

  He opened the old storeroom door. Van der Berg could still smell the smoke, an old woody tang. He found the light switch. A small fluorescent tube illuminated a low space no more than five metres long and three wide.

  Walking in he saw it was a smokehouse no more. There was a desk at the end, a recent TV set with a DVD slot on the side and a modern laptop next to it. A strange place to come and watch television.

  By the computer was a gadget he didn’t recognize. A video camera was docked inside it and beneath was a deep slot for what looked like old-fashioned VHS cassettes.

  ‘Can you buy stuff that digitizes old video tapes?’ he asked. ‘The kind old people like me used to use. The big ones.’

  ‘Of course,’ Aisha said down the line. ‘If you still have tapes to convert. Who has?’

  Van der Berg opened the deep drawer beneath the desk and thought: Stefan Timmers for one. There were cassettes galore neatly stacked on one side and on the other a collection of plastic DVD cases.

  ‘I think our man here likes to take pictures. Moving ones especially.’

  Curious, he turned on the laptop, picked up the first DVD he found and slotted it into the drive. A few moments later the screen came to life.

  Van der Berg shivered. It was an old home movie. Freya Timmers, an attractive woman, with too much make-up and a slur to her voice, was getting ready to sing. Karaoke by the looks of it.

  She began to croon an old jazz number. Lena Horne if he recalled correctly.

  ‘What’s that?’ Aisha asked. ‘It sounds nice.’

  ‘A home movie,’ Van der Berg said, ejecting the disk and sorting through the rest in the drawer. He was glad to get the dead face off the screen. ‘Wait a second.’

  Then he sifted through the collection until he got the one he wanted. The label was for the year of the Timmers murders.