by David Hewson
‘How did you know us? Mum, Dad? All of us?’
Tonny laughed and looked friendly and agreeable when he did that.
‘This is Volendam, sweetheart. Everyone knows everyone. We live in one another’s pockets.’
‘One another’s beds sometimes too,’ Willy grumbled.
‘We used to go fishing with your dad now and then. He had a boat. We didn’t.’
‘Was that it?’ she asked. ‘Fishing.’
‘Isn’t fishing enough?’
‘What are we going to do?’ she wondered.
Tonny Kok looked straight at her in a way people hadn’t in Marken. There they were always patients. Inmates. Guinea pigs for experimentation. Failures who might or might not be cured.
‘What do you want to do?’
Kim started singing from another room. One of the old songs for three voices. Little Jo was in her head, Mia felt sure. If Kim kept on like this their dead sister would be back in her own imagination too before long.
‘Be normal. Just that. Be like everyone else. Ordinary. Invisible.’
He reached over and patted her hand. It was a fond and sympathetic gesture but immediately she recoiled, shrinking from him.
‘Sorry,’ the big man said. ‘I shouldn’t have touched you, should I? We’re just simple country brothers. Don’t mean any harm.’
‘Best you don’t go wandering out of here,’ Willy added. ‘Not without us. The police are looking everywhere. We’ll have a think. Talk to some friends. It’ll be all right. In the end. Promise.’
Kim was singing more loudly. Mia wished she’d answered his question honestly. They couldn’t be ordinary. That was always going to be denied them. Nor could they be invisible.
There was a clatter then, a deep boom, a loud metallic clash. Willy Kok’s face creased with anger. She shrank further from the table, from them.
‘Not that!’ Willy yelled. ‘Not that. Don’t even—’
He was on his feet, dashing for the door and one of the rooms beyond. Too fast for his brother. Too fast for her even.
When she got there he was striding across the bare floor of a place at the back. A drum set, gold with glitter on it, stood in the corner. Kim was on a stool behind, messing around with a pair of brushes, swishing at the cymbals.
‘Not a bloody toy,’ Willy said and grabbed the sticks from her. ‘Out of there now. Go to your room. The pair of you.’
Go to your room.
How often had they heard that? At home when they were small. In Marken when they said the wrong word, the forbidden one . . . no.
The farmhouse bedroom was long and narrow. Kim reckoned the brothers’ old mum had died in the low bed in front of them.
Outside Waterland, dykes and ditches, animals seemingly too sleepy to move, stretched to the far horizon.
Mia wasn’t really listening to her sister. There’d been a name painted on the front of the bass drum. The Cupids. She’d thought that only the good would remain in Volendam when they returned. It never occurred to her that the evil would hang around too.
Soon, exhausted from the dismal night before, she fell asleep and dreamed of the lake, a stage beside it, people playing music. Bad music, out of tune, so dissonant it hurt.
When she woke up the cheap digital clock by the side of the bed said she’d been out of it for almost three hours. The window was open. Kim wasn’t there.
Mia looked out and saw how easy it would be climb onto the roof of the outbuilding below, then let yourself down to the ground.
Volendam was just over a kilometre across the fields. In the far distance a black shape moved towards the low houses, the church, the silvery, endless lake.
80
Bea Arends went and got herself a coffee then sat down and talked, freely, frankly for a good half-hour. The story didn’t emerge quickly. But it came out in the end.
Maria was her daughter, just turned eight when the Timmers family were killed. A quiet, troubled child. There were problems at school, with the social services people. Bea was a single mother. Life was never easy.
Then, the night of the talent contest, everything fell to pieces.
‘Couldn’t do it any more. Any of it. Pretending I was a good mother. Making out I could cope.’
Bakker said, ‘It wasn’t anything to do with you, Bea. Was it?’
‘They were kids! Gus and Freya were a family. A couple. If they couldn’t manage how the hell could I? That girl deserved better. Better than anything I could give her. I’d been falling to pieces for ages anyway. When they got killed . . . and Rogier . . . I just went to pieces.’ A grimace then. ‘Halfway there already. Didn’t take a lot. Took her to the social people and said they had to look after her. I couldn’t. They didn’t argue. One day later I was on a plane, crying my eyes out, swigging at vodka as if that was going to make it all right.’
She got up and went to the sideboard then came back with a slim photo album. A younger Bea, drawn and heavier, sitting on the Volendam waterfront with a quiet, pale child. Neither of them smiling. Just six photos, all taken on the same day.
‘That’s all I’ve got left. Burned the rest when I heard she was dead.’
They waited.
‘Before you ask, Frans was her dad. A kind man. Generous. Decent. He’d have married me if I’d let him but . . .’ She gestured at the photos of The Cupids. ‘How could that have worked? Surrounded by all those glamorous women. Throwing knickers at them night and day. And frumpy me standing there, stuck out like a sore thumb. Maria wasn’t the only kid of theirs in Volendam. They were kings, weren’t they? Kings who came up from the gutter. Kings do stuff like that. Toffs do it all the time. They’re born to it. No one complains about them.’
Vos picked up a photo of Lambert. A tall man with a full head of dark hair, too Eighties for now.
‘What made him run?’
She shrugged her shoulders and said, ‘That was another thing that pushed me over. He came up and told me that morning. Off for good just a few hours later. I never saw it coming. I still got the money. And then . . .’
Her eyes grew glassy.
‘Did he say why?’ Bakker asked.
‘There was trouble with Jaap. There was always trouble with Jaap. Money. Or the kind of music they were playing. I don’t know. Jaap thought he was the band. He made them. They belonged to him.’
She traced the faces on the old photo with her fingers.
‘Five years ago the payments stopped. I guess he must have heard Maria was dead and blamed me. He wasn’t here. I should have been. Instead I was pissing away his money in Spain, out of it most of the time—’
‘We think Frans Lambert changed his name,’ Bakker cut in. ‘He died in a boating accident in Bali. Around that time. It wasn’t you . . .’
No answer.
‘You don’t seem too surprised,’ he added.
The woman nodded.
‘I wondered if he was gone if I’m honest. He came from here. I always thought he’d want to be home some day. You know he’s dead, do you? You’re sure of that?’
Vos put the picture back on the table and said, ‘As much as we’re sure of anything. Why did you get a job at Marken?’
‘Wanted to find out what happened. For myself. You don’t think I believe what people tell you, do you?’ She finished the coffee and sighed. ‘There was always gossip about funny stuff going on there. I wanted to know for myself.’
‘And?’ Bakker asked.
She asked if they wanted more biscuits. They didn’t.
‘If there was I thought it must have stopped before I showed up. I talked to everyone in that place. Nurses. Irene Visser. Veerman. Just quietly. They all seemed genuinely sad. Ashamed they didn’t pick up the way she was going. Maria was always a funny kid, even when I had her. Head up in the clouds. One night she got out and went for a swim. That was it.’
Vos and Bakker exchanged glances. It had to be broached.
‘There was more to it than that,’ he said. ‘There’s
no easy way to say this. Someone had had sex with her. I’m sorry.’
A long silence filled the room punctured only by the bronchial breathing of the slumbering dog.
‘Why didn’t you do something about it?’ she asked eventually.
‘We weren’t on the case. Brigadier Haas was—’
‘Ollie Haas? That man was supposed to find out what happened to my girl? The one who said Mia and Kim killed Rogier? Who couldn’t even find the bastard who murdered Freya and Jo and Gus?’
Vos nodded and didn’t say a word.
‘What are you going to do about it now, mister?’
‘We’ll look,’ he promised. ‘Once we’ve found the sisters. There are a lot of questions to be answered—’
‘Always have been,’ she cut in. ‘But I don’t see anybody asking them.’
‘Bea,’ Bakker said. ‘All in good time . . .’
‘Good time,’ she muttered.
Vos asked about Simon Klerk. Her face fell.
‘Creepy little man. Do you think it was him?’
‘We don’t know,’ Vos replied. ‘We may have to ask permission to exhume your daughter’s body.’
There were tears then, and fury on her face.
‘There’s gossip round this place says Klerk was messing with our girls. Is that right?’
‘What do you think, Bea?’ Vos asked.
‘Bloody police. You never tell us anything till it’s too late. Well it was news to me. To everyone in Marken I think. But then he worked nights. Could have done whatever he liked there. We’d never know.’ She raised the cup in a toast. ‘Paid for it, didn’t he? So maybe there is some justice in the end.’
He got up and walked around the room, thinking. There wasn’t enough for a search warrant here let alone a trawl through her phone records.
‘What about Vera Sampson?’
‘That woman on the news? Do you really reckon Mia and Kim did that?’ She scowled. ‘I don’t believe it. Any more than I think they killed Rogier that night. Two young kids. Not that you lot give a damn . . .’
‘Did you know her?’
‘How the hell would I? Stupid bloody question—’
‘If people don’t come to us,’ Vos began. ‘No one complained. No one said . . . this might have been wrong.’
She stood up and faced him.
‘I guess it’s what you’d call experience, mate. Little people round here. Don’t count for much on your radar screen, do we?’
‘Brigadier Haas got a confession out of those girls,’ Bakker pointed out. ‘They said they killed him.’
It was the right button.
‘They were eleven years old! Ollie Haas could have got a confession out of Jesus! That evil bastard fitted up anyone he liked if they didn’t do what he wanted. If—’
‘So who was it?’ Bakker asked. ‘Who killed the family? Glas? Any ideas?’
She calmed down then, with some effort.
‘No. I haven’t. If I did I’d tell you. That brother of Gus’s had some nasty friends. From Amsterdam. Not here. But Gus and Freya . . . those girls. They were just a family. And Rogier . . . he was a lovely man. All that stuff about him handing out sweeties to the kids. That’s how he was. A real darling. It didn’t mean anything bad. You’ll never tell me otherwise.’
One last opening. Vos wasn’t expecting much. He told her about Jaap Blom’s revelation the previous day. The threat Freya Timmers had supposedly made to reveal someone connected with The Cupids as a child abuser.
She listened, blinking, getting ever more furious.
‘Jaap told you that?’
‘He did say he never believed the accusation. It was just her trying to pressure him into getting a contract.’
Bea Arends snorted.
‘Freya had a contract with him already. For her and the three girls. Got it signed a week before they died. Maybe she was lying, but that’s what she told me.’
She picked up one of the oldest photos. The Cupids in their prime. Glas was in the centre. A handsome, genial-looking man. Everyone’s favourite uncle. There didn’t seem anything sleazy about him at all.
‘There was some trouble with her and Jaap now I think about it though. I’d assumed it was him trying it on with her.’
‘Trying it on?’ Vos asked.
‘He couldn’t keep his hands off anything in a skirt. Even went for me once. I told him where to get off.’ A memory then. ‘That was the only piece of gossip I heard when I went back to Marken.’ She looked at them and laughed. ‘There I was thinking I’d be helping out my dead daughter. And all I picked up was some tittle-tattle that told me what I knew already. He was a dirty old sod.’
They waited.
‘You mean you don’t know this either? Before I turned up there was some kind of board of friends of Marken. Jaap was on it. Used to come along for . . . charity work. Night times usually, from what I gather.’ She smiled, not pleasantly. ‘It was all organized by Irene Visser. They were special friends. Him and the psychiatrist. Friends with favours is what the young call it. Been going on for five years or so. I hope he kept it from Lotte. That wife of his is a Volendam girl. Got the temper to prove it.’
Five minutes later they were back in the car.
Bakker retrieved a packet of mints from her bag, offered him one and said, ‘We’re not supposed to go near him, are we?’
They were tiny mints. He took two.
‘That was this morning.’
‘He said he’d never been to Marken and he was there regularly. Having an affair with Irene Visser. That must have given him access to—’
‘Jaap Blom lied,’ Vos agreed. ‘His wife must have known about some of it too.’
He got the address out of his notebook and tried to remember the difficult, cramped layout of Edam’s pretty old town centre.
‘We need to park near the bus station. Blom lives in a pedestrian street next to the canal.’
She was behind the wheel. And didn’t move.
‘I still don’t understand why Bea Arends would go back to Marken after all that time. Her daughter’s dead. Maybe it was an accident. Or suicide. What did she want to find? Closure?’
He grimaced.
‘Please don’t use that word in my presence. There’s no such thing. It’s a myth.’
‘Why then?’
Good question, he thought.
81
Bea Arends watched them leave. Then she took out the cheap phone she’d bought the week before from a shop in the city and went out back. The cottage looked out onto a sluggish canal. The adjoining homes were owned by rich Amsterdammers who rented them to holidaymakers. Both were empty. The one piece of good fortune she’d had of late.
She banged on the door of the lean-to shed by the rear door and said he could come out. Then she went and sat on one of the three rusty garden chairs by the end of the garden overlooking the water.
‘Did you hear all that?’ she asked, staring at the messages from the past few days.
‘Most.’
The hair was shorter, the moustache now a beard. She wasn’t sure whether people would recognize him or not. Sooner or later he’d have to go public. Frans Lambert, the missing Cupid. Back in circulation. From the dead, or so the authorities thought.
‘That police chap’s as sharp as a razor,’ she said. ‘If he wanted he could clear up this mess like a shot.’
It had all seemed so simple to begin with. Get the girls out of the grip of the institutions when they were freed from Marken. Keep them hidden at Vera’s. Taunt the police with some clues, a few apparent leads. Scare Veerman and the rest with some texts.
At some stage the silence had to break. They had to start reopening old files and realize something had gone badly wrong over the years, however hard the likes of Ollie Haas had tried to hide it.
Freya, Gus and Little Jo. Rogier Glas. Maria. God knows how many more along the way.
But they never imagined the wheels could come off so quickly and in such a violen
t and unpredictable fashion. She looked at the messages she’d sent Vera, anonymously, along with the cash. She’d used the same scheme leaving the notes, the money, the map for the sisters in Marken. Lambert suggested they say it was all from Little Jo. It had never occurred to her how cruel that trick had been.
Maybe that was why it all went wrong. They asked for it. They brought it on themselves. Worse, they brought it on Mia and Kim.
She glared at him and said, ‘We screwed it up from the beginning. You ran. I ran. We left them all behind and now we think we can put it right. Is that for them or us?’
A big man. Strong when he wanted to be. But weak at heart. She appreciated that now.
‘I’m sorry,’ was all he said.
‘Sorry? What use is that? You heard him. Someone had sex with her. With our own daughter.’
‘I—’
‘We screwed up, Frans! All those years ago. And here we are doing it all over again. Making it worse when we’re supposed to be making it better. Ten times worse by the sound of it.’ She looked at the messages on the phone and showed him them. ‘Little Jo. For God’s sake . . . how could we even think of that?’
‘You wanted them out of there. You said it’d make them listen.’
That was true. It was her desperate idea.
She got up and threw the phone over the fence. It hit the green water and vanished beneath the algae and weed.
Then she turned on him, jabbing with a fat index finger.
‘That sharp policeman isn’t going to do a bloody thing. None of them are. It’s down to us now. All of it. You got me?’
He took her arms, tried to hold her. She struggled away, hands flapping at him, puny, furious blows raining on his chest.
‘Too late for that. Kings of Volendam my arse. You’re just a bunch of weak and spineless cowards and we were too blind to see it. Just—’
‘What do you want?’ he yelled. ‘What else?’
She raised a fist in his face.
‘I want what I always wanted! Some bloody justice.’
He didn’t say anything. She gripped his black shirt and pulled him to her.
‘You vanished the moment you heard Maria was dead. Just cut me off—’
‘While you were pissing it up in Spain. Don’t throw it all at me, Bea. We’re both guilty.’
