by David Hewson
Brugman closed his eyes and sighed.
‘I mean,’ Van der Berg went on, ‘let’s imagine it wasn’t them. Yet still they confessed. They felt guilty. That’s what happens with kids sometimes. When they’re abused. They blame themselves. Not the bastard who messes with them. Not . . .the rest of us . . . for letting it happen in the first place.’
Brugman grabbed the guitar case and the amp and muttered, ‘This is all beyond me.’
‘Did anyone else have reason to hate Rogier? Reason enough to kill him?’
Brugman thought for a while then said, ‘Not enough to kill him. No.’
‘Who?’
A shrug. He wasn’t happy saying this.
‘You didn’t mess with Jaap. He was the boss. He made us. He told us that day in and day out. You took what he offered and you didn’t argue. Even when it meant we had to pretend we liked all that dance and rock shit he made us do. We were supposed to be these happy, smiling Volendam guys for the public. Legends who never got old. But honestly . . . it wasn’t like that. God knows where most of the money went. And the pressure . . . it got ridiculous. Rogier kept nagging us to dump Jaap and find someone else. They were his songs. Jaap was making more money out of them than any of us. Rogier talked about going solo a few times too. We all had. Jaap hit the roof the moment he heard and put a stop to it. Said we didn’t have the talent. Or the balls. He was right. Apart from Rogier. He was the golden goose. It wasn’t just him who died that night. We all did.’
He stopped, remembering something.
‘What is it?’ Van der Berg wondered.
‘I was really wasted that day. Been drinking since eleven or so. Truth is . . . most of the last ten years of The Cupids we’d broken up. Barely made a damned thing together. Jaap just wouldn’t let us tell anyone. Things were really frosty between him and Rogier. Jaap had us under contract. None of us could get out of it. We had to do what he wanted. I knew there must have been some kind of blow-up when Frans slipped in the news he was headed for the airport. He always made himself scarce if there was an argument around.’
‘Wait.’ Van der Berg was trying to think this through. ‘You didn’t know Lambert was leaving until that very day?’
‘Booked it that morning he said. Jaap wasn’t pleased. We had some sessions the week after. We knew we’d have to use some local guy instead. Frans could be a real jerk when he wanted.’
He got up and Van der Berg saw how badly he moved. The limp. The shaky way he held the amp. He looked sick, not just decrepit.
‘One question. Ever heard of a kid called Maria Koops?’
Brugman stopped and looked at him.
‘Yeah.’
‘Where?’
‘She was that girl who killed herself in Marken a few years back. One of the fishermen picked her out of the lake. It was in the paper.’
‘An orphan,’ Van der Berg said.
‘Has she got something to do with all this?’
‘Maybe.’
Brugman looked interested.
‘What are you going to do?’
‘Not a lot we can do at the moment. It’s all just . . .a mess.’
Brugman glared at him and said, ‘Nice to see our tax money going to good use. Keeping us all safe at night.’
How many times had he heard that? Van der Berg couldn’t count them.
‘When do you play next?’
‘Officially? Tonight in the Jordaan. Bar near Lindengracht.’
‘Unofficially?’
Brugman lifted the amp.
‘I may just try busking out here. Until the police come along and move me on. Do you want to listen?’
Van der Berg wrote his mobile number on a card and handed it over.
‘Call me any time. There’s something you know, Gert. Maybe you don’t even realize it. If you’d like to share—’
But by then he was shambling out of the door.
Van der Berg paid for the coffee and checked his messages. Nothing happening anywhere. He hoped Vos and Bakker were having more luck. He still couldn’t work out why Brugman had been so desperate to talk to someone. Would it have been different if Vos had turned up? The ‘straight’ one?
The phone rang.
Back in Marnixstraat Aisha Refai was doing her best to make the call unnoticed from a quiet corner of forensic. The ribbons of tape had returned from the lab. To her surprise there was something on them.
‘I need to talk to you, Dirk. Right now.’
‘Because?’
She glanced around then swore under her breath. Snyder was back from the clubhouse by the water. He had the beadiest eyes she’d ever seen and just then they were on her.
‘Not on the phone. Just get in here.’
‘Will do.’
She was trying to close down the window on her laptop when the man from Rotterdam got there. Too slow.
‘Who sent this to the lab?’ he asked. In his hands was a ribbon of VCR tape. ‘I didn’t know anything about it.’
‘I was going to—’
He shoved her to one side and looked at the laptop. She didn’t say a thing.
‘Go home,’ he ordered.
‘What?’
‘I said go home. I can’t have people running around doing what the hell they like without my knowledge.’
‘Snyder. You weren’t here.’
‘Don’t give me that shit. You sent this stuff off last night and didn’t even tell me.’
‘You weren’t here.’
‘This is starting to offend me now. You are starting to offend me. Go home,’ he ordered. ‘I’ll let you know if I want you back.’
Outside in the street, close to tears she called Van der Berg again and said they ought to meet for a coffee somewhere.
‘I’m going to drown in coffee, Aisha.’
‘I’ll rescue you,’ she said and told him the place to be, twenty minutes or so.
She sounded down and that was unusual.
Brugman had set up in the centre of the square, amp on the cobblestones, guitar out, ready to play. The local uniforms would move him on in fifteen minutes at the most.
Van der Berg wandered over and said good luck. He meant it.
The guitarist looked at him and said, ‘That Koops kid?’
‘Yes?’
‘You said she was an orphan.’
‘Or something. Single mother maybe.’
Brugman scratched his head.
‘I don’t like gossip. Especially with outsiders. But . . .that’s not right. Not really.’
Van der Berg said he could handle gossip. Listened then asked for a name. When he heard it he closed his eyes and cursed his own stupidity.
Walking back towards the cafe and Aisha he called Vos.
‘Where are you?’
Outside Ollie Haas’s place on the edge of Volendam. Haas wasn’t home.
‘What did Brugman have to say?’ Vos asked.
‘That’s a very good question,’ Van der Berg replied. ‘I’m still trying to work it out. But one thing. You remember I mentioned that cook . . . ?’
75
The sisters sat on the back seat all the way. People got on. People got off. No one looked at them much at all.
Invisible, Kim whispered as they pulled through Broek.
No we’re not, Mia thought. Anything but.
The bus idled in Monnickendam for a while. They stared out of the windows at the bright summer day, the park they called the Green Heart, the verdant fields behind.
Waterland. Narrow dykes, broader streams. The grey lake ahead. Marken across the gentle summer waves, its long finger jabbing out towards Volendam.
They hadn’t set foot in the place of their birth since the night their family and Rogier Glas were murdered. No one from the town had come to see them in custody or in Marken. Not even Uncle Stefan. But then he and their parents had never seen eye to eye.
Would anyone recognize them? Even as they were? She’d no idea and didn’t want to know. They had to find so
mewhere to hide. Somewhere to think. And then . . .
The woman in front was reading the news on her tablet. It was easy to see over her shoulder. They were the lead item, alongside a picture of Vera the Englishwoman. Vera Sampson. They never knew her second name.
The headlines said it all.
Kim saw them too then leaned on her shoulder shivering. Pleading. For what? Answers. Release. Something they could cling to and hope it might bear the name of truth.
Then she whispered in Mia’s ear, ‘They’re saying we killed her. We didn’t.’ Her breath was too quick, her voice low and frightened. ‘Did we?’
‘No,’ Mia whispered. ‘We didn’t. Kaatje was there. You brought her. Remember?’
The bus kept moving. Out into the countryside again, the last leg before the town by the water, with its harbour where a talent show once happened, three young girls singing their hearts out for all to see.
Kim’s wild eyes roamed around. It was like this after the man died in his van. She went crazy then and Mia followed, just to keep her company.
In the narrow green channel by the road a family of ducks leapt squawking out of the water, surprised by the sudden sound of the bus.
‘Quack!’ Kim cried so loudly the other passengers turned and stared.
She giggled and put a hand over her mouth. Then kissed Mia quickly on the cheek and said sorry.
They weren’t more than a kilometre from the town so Mia pressed the bell.
‘Let’s go,’ she said. ‘Kim.’
Her sister didn’t move.
‘We’re not there.’
‘We’re where we’re going. Remember? The chickens?’
She thought for a second.
‘Chickens. Right. I remember.’
Mia wondered whether that was for real.
The bus came to a halt by a narrow dirt track. At the end was a ramshackle low farmhouse with wrecks of tractors and other machinery scattered around the yard.
They walked up the dusty lane. Mia rang the bell. No answer. Then she led Kim round the back. There was a barn there and a warm, fond sound that brought back so many pleasant memories.
Hens clucking round a grimy patch of enclosed grass and earth, a wooden house to keep them safe from foxes.
Kim laughed, crouched down and picked some fresh grass from the field to push through the wire.
Footsteps behind in the stifling day. Mia heard them first. They both turned.
‘Well, girls,’ Tonny Kok said. ‘We saw you getting off the bus and walking down the drive. To what do we owe . . . ?’
He was bigger and much older than they remembered. The second man larger still.
‘It’s them, isn’t it?’ Willy asked his brother. ‘Freya and Gus’s kids.’
‘Oh my,’ Tonny muttered. ‘Oh my.’
Mia stood up straight and said, very earnestly, ‘We didn’t do anything. Whatever they said. We never hurt anyone. Honest.’
‘Honest,’ Kim added.
The two men had their hands on their chins, watching them. They were brothers. Not twins. But maybe they had a bond too. They understood.
‘You are different. But . . .’ Tonny leaned down for a closer look. ‘Maybe not underneath. Not when I think about it. All grown up now. As much as any of us ever gets.’
Mia took out all the money they had and held it in front of her, hands shaking.
‘We can pay,’ she said. ‘Take it all. No use to us.’
‘What do you want?’ Tonny asked.
Mia couldn’t think of a word to say.
It was Kim who spoke.
‘Mum used to bring us here to feed the chickens.’
‘You and your sister,’ Willy said. ‘Those were the days.’
‘Jo.’ Kim smiled. ‘Little Jo.’
She started to sing. A line from a Cupids song. Mia took her hand and told her to be quiet.
‘I bet you’re hungry,’ Tonny told them. ‘I know. How about you two go out back and find some eggs from them there hens?’
Kim was through the gate in a flash. Mia could picture this so clearly. Lifting the birds and finding that magical thing beneath them, warm and shiny, smelling of feathers, and the birds didn’t seem to mind them taking their eggs at all.
‘Thank you,’ she said.
‘Nothing, girl,’ Tonny told her. ‘But best we get inside soon. So no one sees, eh?’
76
Vos insisted they visit the churchyard first. They parked in the narrow street of Kerkepad, a street back from the seafront. On one side a dense hedge next to the brown-brick church hid the graves. On the other a small iron bridge crossed the canal to an alley leading to the Gouwzee. They were past the harbour with its cafes and seafood shops and the hordes of day trippers hunting T-shirts and cheap gifts. Here Volendam was quiet and residential, small houses, most just about detached from one another, fronted by tiny gardens with neat flower beds competing for attention.
Still they could smell the ever-present water, a briny tang hanging over everything. There was the distant sound of too-loud pop music from a bar somewhere. Along the narrow canal a grey heron stood stiff on its stick-like legs, then jabbed its long spear beak into the weed and came out with a wriggling frog.
He checked his notebook. The Timmers had lived on the other side of town, in the cramped timber fishermen’s cottages. So did Bea Arends.
‘Let’s take a look at the grave first.’
Bakker didn’t move and he asked her why.
‘I’ve never liked churchyards. Not since I buried my mum and dad.’
‘We have to do this. We may have to come back and exhume that girl. I hope not. But . . .’
Still she didn’t move. The events of the previous day hadn’t left her, he guessed. No reason why they should. No more than a kilometre from here, in a hidden cabin now being probed by forensic, she’d looked death straight in the face.
‘But if you really don’t want—’
‘Let’s do it. I’m just being stupid,’ she said, and led the way to the church.
The caretaker who’d talked to Van der Berg was in the nave, a small man in overalls, wielding a very old horsehair broom. He wasn’t so friendly now the police had turned up in person.
Vos asked him about Maria Koops and whether he could check the records to see who’d paid for her grave.
‘I told your man,’ the caretaker replied, not even making a move for the office. ‘It was an anonymous donation. We don’t know. Why should we?’
‘Who puts flowers on her grave?’
He grunted something under his breath then said, ‘Lots of people come with flowers. You think I’ve got nothing better to do than follow them around the place?’
Volendam, Vos thought. The locals were never going to be easy with strangers. He asked for directions and said thanks. Then the two of them went outside. The headstone was near the hedge of shrubs close to where they’d parked. Recent, unstained by the years. The inscription in the cold grey stone seemed bolder than it appeared in Van der Berg’s snapshot. The lyrics of the song especially.
Love is like a chain that binds me.
Love is like a last goodbye.
There was a small bouquet of yellow roses next to the grave, a white label around the stems. Bakker bent down to take a look then shook her head. It was just the price tag from a supermarket.
‘We don’t need to dig her up, do we?’
‘If I have to I will.’
‘To find out what? I read the report. She’d been in the water for two days. In the ground now for five years. Could there really be—?’
‘If we don’t look we won’t know, will we?’ he said, a touch peremptorily.
She went quiet.
‘I’m sorry,’ Vos added. ‘I didn’t mean to be abrupt. It’s just that . . .’ Laura Bakker had a way of bringing ideas and doubts and possibilities to the surface. It was a talent she possessed without knowing it. A useful one. ‘The more we delve into this, the more you see people not looking
. Just turning away. And if we don’t look . . . who does?’
He gazed at the grave once more and then went back to the church, walked through the cool, quiet interior, didn’t bother the caretaker. If the man knew something he wasn’t saying.
It was ten minutes to Bea Arends’ cottage. The place wasn’t easy to find in the tangle of old streets behind the harbour. Eventually they located the address: a black wooden shack, tiny, with flowerpots on the front deck and white net curtains pulled back like curious eyebrows. The homes of both the Timmers family and their uncle Stefan couldn’t have been more than a couple of minutes away on foot.
Bea Arends answered the door. She was about fifty, stocky with a ruddy face, greying brown hair, sad green eyes and the stance of someone used to years of manual work.
Vos showed his ID card and she scowled at it.
‘Did Sherlock send you then? I wondered when he’d finally catch something with all that fishing.’
‘Sherlock?’
‘That big bloke of yours. The one who got biffed.’
A dog barked, loud but friendly. The German shepherd went straight for Bakker who bent down and stroked his handsome head.
‘Funny that,’ she said, tugging at his collar. ‘I told the other one. Rex doesn’t normally like strangers.’
She looked the two of them up and down.
‘Best you come in, I suppose.’
77
Van der Berg bought two coffees, didn’t even touch his, looked at Aisha and said, ‘Let me guess. Stefan was busy churning out porn in that shack of his. Kiddie porn, probably. I reckon—’
‘Possibly.’ She seemed upset and for the moment he didn’t want to know why. ‘But it wasn’t that.’
He opened his arms, grinned and pointed at the tablet in her bag.
‘Something to show me?’
‘Snyder kicked me out of the office.’
‘Oh.’ The young woman behind the counter put out some sandwiches. He wondered about a beer then decided against it. ‘If you want to wait for Vos to come back . . .’
‘I don’t. Dammit!’
She banged her fist on the table. The coffee cups jumped.
He went and bought two sandwiches. Then listened.
