Little Sister

by David Hewson

  ‘And to think those she-devils of hers murdered poor Rogier.’

  She stared at Vos and asked, ‘They did, didn’t they?’

  ‘So it would seem,’ he replied. ‘I didn’t handle the case.’

  ‘Do you not have an opinion?’

  De Groot intervened and said, ‘We’re dealing with today. Not what happened ten years ago.’

  Blom shrugged.

  ‘As you can see, gentlemen, it was my wife’s idea to come here. I think she’s probably said what she wanted. Can I help in some way? If so—’

  ‘What happened?’ Vos asked before De Groot could stop him. ‘That day in Volendam? The talent contest?’

  Blom laughed and said, ‘Surely you know. Brigadier Haas investigated everything very thoroughly as far as I recall.’

  ‘I’d just like to hear it.’

  What followed was short and plain. Freya Timmers took her three daughters to sing on the stage by the harbour during the summer fair. All three Cupids, Glas, Brugman and Lambert, were the judges, though most people thought Blom would tell them which way to vote. As soon as the contest was over and the prizes handed out Lambert caught a cab to Schiphol to go on holiday in the Far East, never to return. Rogier Glas and Blom went to the recording studio to work on some new songs. Gert Brugman stayed around the waterfront drinking with the locals.

  ‘What time did Glas leave?’ Vos asked.

  The politician frowned.

  ‘I went through all this with Haas. We packed in about eight. I drove home to Edam. Rogier went to pick up his van. He had a cottage out of town. Next thing I hear . . .’

  ‘Haas told us,’ Lotte Blom said firmly. ‘That Timmers girl and their parents got killed the moment they set foot in the house. Someone was waiting for them. One of the neighbours heard some screams.’ The memory seemed to amuse her. ‘Did nothing of course.’

  ‘Why not?’ Vos wondered.

  She stared at him as if the answer was obvious.

  ‘Gus Timmers was an animal. Like his brother. There were always lots of screams. Him. Her. Those kids of theirs. I doubt you people would even have turned up if someone had called.’

  Freya was furious the girls had only won a runner-up prize, Blom said. She’d gone home with Jo and her husband, leaving Mia and Kim to pick up whatever bauble they got. They’d left just before eight, found the door to their home open, walked inside . . .

  Vos asked, ‘Why did Mia and Kim think Rogier Glas was responsible?’

  Lotte Blom laughed in his face and said, ‘I can’t believe you’re asking us that. I don’t know why we came here. Truly.’

  De Groot huffed and puffed and then said, ‘Freya Timmers had tried to lodge a complaint with Haas the previous week. She said someone connected with The Cupids had . . . abused the girls’ trust.’

  ‘Who?’

  Blom shook his head.

  ‘Haas took this up with me. It was all a fairy story. She was trying to get me to sign up the girls. A recording contract. Everyone knew The Cupids were finished. Except them. The best I could fix them up with by then were a few holiday camp gigs. Maybe an Eighties revival tour. She thought those kids could take their place. I might have signed them, but not for the kind of money she was after. It was ridiculous. I assumed going to Haas was her way of trying to force things. Maybe she talked those kids into believing it too. They adored her. She was the loving mother. They were her three darling angels. There wasn’t anything they wouldn’t have done for Freya.’

  ‘That bitch slept with half the men in Volendam trying to get what she wanted,’ Lotte Blom muttered.

  ‘No, no.’ Her husband tried to calm her down. ‘It wasn’t that bad. She just . . . liked to get around. And they’re dead. Whatever we think of them . . .’

  ‘I still don’t understand why the girls thought it was Rogier Glas,’ Vos pointed out.

  De Groot glanced at his watch. Jaap Blom did the same.

  ‘The truth is we don’t know,’ the commissaris said. ‘When they were taken into custody they wouldn’t talk at all. Not that it mattered. They were there. They had the knife. There was no one else around.’

  Vos considered his options then looked at Blom and asked, ‘Where were you on Monday night?’

  ‘At home. With Lotte.’

  ‘Doing what?’

  ‘I was watching TV,’ she said. ‘Jaap spent the evening dealing with government papers. Ministry papers. As he usually does. No time off—’

  ‘What are you suggesting?’ Blom snapped.

  Vos sighed.

  ‘I’m not suggesting anything. I’m just asking the questions police officers always ask.’ He smiled. ‘If we didn’t I expect we’d be in trouble with the ministry. Wouldn’t we?’

  No answer to that.

  ‘You didn’t go—?’

  ‘I drove back from The Hague in the morning. We had lunch at a restaurant in the town. We never set foot out of the house after—’

  ‘Where were you last night?’

  Blom was getting mad.

  ‘This is ridiculous! The same! At home! Why—’

  ‘That’s enough,’ De Groot barked.

  ‘Last night someone assaulted an officer of mine,’ Vos continued. ‘In Volendam. And stole what I believe to be crucial evidence from Stefan Timmers’ cottage.’

  There was a steely, arrogant glint in Jaap Blom’s eyes at that moment.

  ‘I am an elected member of the House of Representatives. Not a common criminal.’

  ‘We’re done here,’ De Groot announced.

  ‘Have you ever been to Marken?’ Vos asked.

  A long silence. Lotte Blom muttered something inaudible under her breath. Then her husband said, ‘I’m a politician. I live in Edam. I visit lots of places all the time. Of course I’ve been to Marken—’

  ‘I meant the institution. Not the village. Did you ever visit there? In an official or a private capacity? Have you ever met Kim and Mia Timmers since that night ten years ago?’

  ‘This is ridiculous,’ Lotte Blom complained. ‘And insulting.’

  De Groot was growling.

  ‘No,’ her husband said. ‘To all those questions.’ He turned to his wife. ‘Are we done here? Do you think this was worth it?’

  Lotte Blom uttered a long sigh then opened her bag and played with her phone.

  ‘Thanks for coming,’ the commissaris said and got to his feet.

  They shook hands, all of them, and the Bloms left.

  ‘I had to ask, Frank,’ Vos pleaded.

  ‘You really shouldn’t call me by my first name.’

  ‘I don’t when people are here.’

  ‘But you do.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  Vos stood up and looked around the office.

  It was sunny out by the canal. If it was his day off he’d be spending it lazing on the boat with Sam, heading for an afternoon beer across the road in the Drie Vaten. That thought was tantalizing.

  ‘I really don’t mind if you’d rather someone else took over this case. I won’t object. Honestly.’

  Not that he meant it. He just wanted to hear the response.

  ‘I don’t have anyone else, do I? It’s August. Every sane man out there’s on holiday.’

  He played with a photo frame on the desk. It was of his daughter’s wedding. De Groot looked as if he wished he were back there in the church.

  ‘What next?’ he asked.

  ‘I track down those girls. That’s what you want, isn’t it?’

  De Groot nodded.

  Vos left.

  51

  Veerman asked Aartsen, a ginger-haired day nurse, to stay with Bakker every inch of the way around Marken. He was about thirty-five, a timid, tubby man. It was clear he’d rather be anywhere else in the world.

  She started in Visser’s office, a tidy room that overlooked the wood next to the lake. The tents of the forensic team that had handled Klerk’s body were still there, as if someone had forgotten about them. Aartsen started moani
ng about how he had work to do.

  ‘Me too,’ Bakker replied and went to Visser’s desktop computer first. ‘How do I get the password?’

  He didn’t know. He was a nurse, he said. She called Veerman. He didn’t have a clue either. The network was handled externally, by an outsourcing outfit in the city. He could put in a request for a password retrieval, but it normally took a day or so.

  She turned to the filing cabinet, three drawers deep by the window. It was locked. Aartsen didn’t know where the key was. Neither did Veerman.

  ‘Do you do your own maintenance?’ she asked. ‘Or is that outsourced too?’

  There was a handyman employed part-time. He had a workshop near the canteen. She got Aartsen to take her there. It was the handyman’s day off but the place was open so she could wander in, check through the tools and then walk off with a decent-sized, shiny new crowbar in her hand.

  Aartsen was on the phone to Veerman before she even got to the stairs back to Visser’s office.

  ‘You can’t damage institution property,’ the nurse insisted, trying to push ahead and block her way.

  ‘I’m just going to pick the lock,’ Bakker said cheerily, waving the crowbar in his face. ‘It’s a technical trick we learn in the police. You should watch and learn.’

  Veerman turned up just as she got the crowbar inside the lip of the top drawer. Bakker heaved. The drawer flew open. The director stood at the door, arms folded, not saying a word as Aartsen stuttered his way through a series of excuses and apologies.

  The cabinet came away easily under the pressure. Laura Bakker pushed it to one side with her hand. The thing toppled over almost immediately. She dragged open the drawers. Empty files in the top one. Nothing in the middle. A red leather handbag in the bottom.

  Veerman watched in silence. Aartsen quietened down. She put on a pair of gloves and opened up the handbag. There was a rip in the side. It was obviously an old one, discarded because it was damaged, nothing inside but fluff and dust.

  ‘You don’t seem surprised, Director,’ she said.

  ‘Most of our work’s computerized these days. Why would I be?’

  ‘What’s the point of keeping a filing cabinet then?’

  She looked at the drawers more closely. There was no dust in them. The runners had been used. This had been a place Visser stored things until recently.

  ‘Irene did things her own way,’ he replied. ‘I don’t know how exactly. She was clinical staff. I was admin. It wasn’t my job to tell her what to do. And now she’s dead.’

  Bakker wondered whether it was worth going to her home and taking a poke around.

  ‘What was she trying to hide?’ she asked, half to herself.

  ‘I’m not aware she was trying to hide anything.’

  ‘She fled the house when we went to question her. We thought it was because she was connected to Klerk’s death. But she wasn’t. The phone was stolen. Lots of things get pinched here, don’t they?’

  Aartsen stared at his shoes. Veerman said, ‘Our patients are very disturbed. We have to put up with things that might result in disciplinary action in prison. Turn a blind eye to them.’

  ‘Did you do that? Did you know Visser was ignoring things? The theft of her phone?’

  He was getting tetchy.

  ‘I didn’t sit over her every minute of the day. That’s not my job. And it’s not my style. Now . . .’ He walked over and set the broken filing cabinet upright. ‘Unless you want to damage some more of our property perhaps you could find something else to do. I’ve business to attend to.’ He looked at Aartsen. ‘See her out, will you?’

  Bakker couldn’t think of anything else to say, anywhere new to look. This was her first big individual test and it was all going so wrong.

  They went downstairs and crossed the car park to take the crowbar back. By the workshop was another door marked ‘Staff Only’.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘It’s the staff cloakroom,’ Aartsen said.

  ‘What’s there?’

  He groaned.

  ‘Coat hangers. Toilets. Showers. Lockers.’

  He looked glum as if he’d said too much. She pushed her way in. At the end of the room was a ceiling-to-floor set of metal lockers with the same institutional look as Visser’s filing cabinet. She walked along until she found one labelled ‘S. Klerk’.

  ‘I take it you’ve cleared this out?’

  Aartsen didn’t look at her as he said, ‘I don’t know. It’s all gone crazy this week. Why would—? No. No. Please.’

  The door was locked so she pushed the crowbar under the lip before he could finish. One heave, harder than the pressure she’d needed for the filing cabinet, and the locker was open. Bakker pulled on a pair of latex gloves then took out her pocket torch and shone it inside.

  ‘Director Veerman needs to see this,’ the nurse announced.

  ‘The more the merrier,’ she said.

  52

  Laura Bakker’s nervous hand reached inside Simon Klerk’s locker and retrieved the first thing it found. A hand towel, crumpled and worse for wear. She knew what to do straight away: sniff it.

  Veerman marched in at that moment and demanded to know what was going on.

  Two months earlier Bakker had been on the team for a particularly nasty rape in the red-light district. A street woman attacked by a group of drunks on the way home. They’d nailed the leader of the culprits through a towel in a coffee shop he’d visited afterwards. She’d found that. Vos had been proud.

  Three rapid strides then Veerman came up close and told her to leave. Bakker held out the towel and said, ‘What does that smell like to you?’ She pointed to one of several stains on the white-and-red-striped fabric. ‘There’s a clue.’

  He stared at her as if she were crazy. She sighed, got an evidence bag out of her pocket and popped the towel inside.

  ‘Well we’ll soon find out. Why didn’t you tell me about the lockers?’

  ‘Why would I?’ he asked.

  ‘Did Irene Visser have one?’

  ‘No. She had an office. Why would she need a locker? What are you doing?’

  ‘This . . .’

  Filthy jeans and a pair of mud-caked short galoshes came out next. There was a different smell to them. Diesel, she thought, and salt water. Then came something that prompted a memory: Sara Klerk in Marnixstraat asking out of nowhere if they’d found her husband’s phone.

  Here it was, a fancy Sony, the waterproof kind. She pressed the power button. Nothing happened. Flat battery she hoped. Perhaps that was why he left it when he took the sisters out of Marken. Or he didn’t want to be disturbed. The phone went into another evidence bag. After that there was one thing left. A set of keys on a fob that bore the name ‘Evinrude’.

  Back in Friesland Bakker had an uncle who liked to go fishing. He owned a small boat. The outboard motor on the back was the same American brand.

  There were three keys on the ring. One was small and had the Evinrude logo too. The other two looked like standard modern door keys. She turned the fob over. Scrawled in blue ink, a few years old she guessed, were the words ‘Flamingo Club: Spare Set’. Above those, held down with old sticky tape, was a paper cut-out of a pink bird flapping its wings, grinning with its odd-shaped beak.

  ‘So Simon Klerk kept a boat?’ she asked, looking at Veerman.

  ‘I’ve no idea.’

  She waited and wondered: was that it?

  ‘He kept this stuff here, Veerman. Not at home.’

  ‘He never mentioned anything about a boat.’

  ‘Not to me either,’ the nurse chipped in.

  ‘These are a spare set of keys for somewhere called the Flamingo Club—’

  ‘Never heard of it,’ Veerman interrupted. Aartsen said the same.

  Bakker stuck her head inside the locker. There was nothing else.

  ‘Don’t touch anything,’ she told them. ‘I’m going to talk to Marnixstraat—’

  ‘What Simon Klerk did in his spa
re time was nothing to do with us,’ Veerman insisted.

  ‘You must have talked to the man!’

  He shook his head.

  ‘Not much. I work days. Until a few weeks ago he was always on night shift. There was no need for me to be here. I barely saw him.’

  ‘I’m days too,’ the nurse said, putting his hand up like a child in class. ‘I didn’t know the guy.’

  Bakker tried to picture this. The institution wasn’t big. It didn’t need many people. There still had to be some kind of hierarchy.

  ‘So who was in charge?’ she asked.

  ‘Klerk when he was on duty.’ Veerman checked his watch. ‘Irene would come in if there was a medical issue. But we don’t have many of those. Klerk was a trusted man. One of the longest-standing members of staff we had. He’d be here with the night security staff. This is a remote secure facility. Not a prison.’

  ‘I can see that.’

  ‘Are you leaving now?’ he asked. ‘Or do I call De Groot?’

  Bakker went to the car and put the evidence bags in the boot. After that she pulled out the USB charger for her own phone, attached the cable to Klerk’s Sony and plugged it into the cigarette lighter.

  Sara Klerk’s phone number she got from the office system.

  The woman worked in one of the local food factories. Casual labour in all probability. But she wasn’t at work then. There were street sounds: cars and voices.

  ‘It’s Officer Bakker,’ she said when the call got through. ‘I need to know where your husband kept his boat.’

  There was a long pause then, ‘What boat? We don’t have a boat.’

  Are you sure?’

  ‘Of course I’m sure. What would we do with a boat?’

  ‘I don’t know. Go fishing. Pleasure trips—’

  ‘We’ve never owned a boat.’

  ‘OK. What about a place called the Flamingo Club? Do you know where that is?’

  There was a curse on the line.

  ‘Have you found those bitches yet? They killed my husband.’

  ‘We’re looking,’ she said. ‘Making steady progress.’

  ‘Those cows—’

  ‘The Flamingo Club, Mrs Klerk.’

  ‘I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.’