Little Sister

by David Hewson

  There was a video up on the screen. It was a beach somewhere, blue sea, blue sky, golden sand. Then a figure began to walk across it, headed for the waves. It was Blom’s wife in a bikini.

  ‘If you really think the police need to see my holiday videos,’ Blom said, ‘I’ll burn some DVDs and you can take them with you.’

  Bakker looked at the pile of disks next to the computer. Vos walked over and picked up a few. They all had exotic destinations on the label: Phuket, Barbados, the Seychelles.

  ‘It’s a hobby of mine,’ Blom said, ambling over. He opened a drawer next to the desk. It was full of cameras, still and video. ‘Taking pictures. Innocent pictures.’

  ‘We need to take the computer,’ Bakker told him. ‘All your disks. All the . . . drives you have.’

  ‘Laura . . .’ Vos began.

  ‘Why?’ Blom walked over and closed the notebook lid. ‘What possible business is this of yours?’

  Bakker got up. She was struggling.

  ‘If there’s nothing to see you won’t object. You said we could . . .’

  He walked to the door and held it open.

  ‘One chance, I said. You had one opportunity to get out of here and then it wouldn’t go any further. You didn’t take it.’

  ‘Pieter.’ She took Vos to one side, pleading in a quiet, worried voice. ‘There has to be something. He lied to us.’

  ‘Get out,’ Blom ordered. ‘This is illegal entry. I could have your backsides in court for this.’

  ‘He . . .’

  Vos put his arm round her and the two of them walked back into the street. They went over the bridge in silence, past the two old men who stared at them, puzzled, still sipping at their beers. Blom was on the other side of the canal in his summer house. Smoking another cigar. On the phone.

  When they reached the car she looked at Vos and said, ‘I made a bit of a mess of that, didn’t I?’

  ‘A bit,’ he agreed.

  Then his phone rang and he knew who it would be. Vos went away from her to take the call. De Groot wasn’t even mad. Things had moved beyond that now.

  ‘Put her on,’ the commissaris ordered when he’d run through Blom’s version of events and Vos hadn’t argued with a single detail.

  ‘Frank. Don’t be hasty. There’s more going on here than meets the eye. I do believe Jaap Blom’s hiding something . . .’

  ‘The sisters!’ De Groot yelled down the line. ‘Where are they? What are you doing to find them?’

  ‘I’m trying to understand. Not making a great job of it I’ll admit but—’

  ‘Put her on now. I don’t want to see her face inside this office until the disciplinary people ask for it.’

  There was never any point in arguing with him when it was like this. So Vos went and handed her the phone then wandered off for a while, looking back along the canal. Modest houses on one side. Mansions on the other. Jaap Blom had crossed over, from Volendam to Edam, and probably made a good number of enemies along the way. He might be lying. So might Bea Arends. Or the pair of them. The only thing that was certain was that they couldn’t both be telling the truth.

  ‘Pieter?’

  Her voice had a soft, hurt bleat to it, a tone he’d heard from time to time. He always hated the circumstances that caused it.

  He wandered back to the car. She handed him the phone.

  ‘De Groot says I’m suspended. He’s calling in the disciplinary people. I’m going to get kicked out.’

  ‘One step at a time. I’ll talk to Frank tomorrow. When he’s calmed down a bit—’

  ‘He says I’ve pissed off one of the most important men around. Blom could make all our lives awkward. Someone has to take the blame.’

  He took her arms.

  ‘Tomorrow . . .’

  ‘I’ve been a bloody idiot. Again.’

  She swore, kicked the car hard with her heavy work shoes, then swore again, more vividly. The elderly pair along the track stared at them and shook their heads.

  ‘Did that help?’ Vos asked.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, climbing into the passenger seat. ‘Why are you looking at me like that?’

  He was and he hadn’t realized it.

  ‘Because you make me think. Good going for an idiot.’

  ‘Thanks!’

  ‘I mean . . .’ He was struggling. ‘I mean we’re all idiots. That’s what we do. Blunder about. In the dark mostly. Don’t kill yourself for it. Sometimes we find something. Help someone. And then we’re not idiots at all. For a while anyway.’

  Laura Bakker looked deeply miserable.

  ‘I make a good idiot, don’t I? From what De Groot said—’

  A different phone trill interrupted them. It puzzled her for a moment. Then she reached into her bag, retrieved her private mobile and looked at the number on screen.

  ‘Why the hell is Dirk calling me on this number?’ she wondered then answered, listened for a moment, looked at Vos and said, ‘It’s for you.’

  86

  When she let herself out of the farmhouse there was only one place for Kim Timmers to go. Back to the town by the lake, to wander along the waterfront trying not to stare at all the blank and aimless people there.

  She couldn’t remember being outside on her own like this. Even when there was family it rarely happened. There was always her mother, Little Jo, Mia by her side. Except when Freya asked her for a favour and for some reason Kim was always the first, the one who didn’t object too much. The obedient one, for a while anyway. Which meant she wasn’t alone for long either. Just with a stranger, or someone whose face she was supposed to forget.

  She had a ten-euro note in her pocket and spent almost a quarter of it on an ice cream. It occurred to her she’d no idea what things cost. How any of this worked. And she wondered . . . would someone look at her white face and the chestnut hair and see what lay beneath?

  Kim didn’t intend to stare at any of the people round her but she couldn’t stop herself. Some were familiar. Women working the stalls, selling fried fish and sweet waffles. They all looked older, more worn than she remembered. Still, they were the same people. They’d been here a decade before when a family called Timmers lived in a black-timbered cottage two streets behind this gaudy shoreline, dreaming of money and fame, all through nothing more than the sweet sounds three young girls and their mother could make when they wanted. When someone paid.

  The harbour was too risky. She felt guilty for abandoning her sister after one more promise that only wound up broken. Mia was the good one, the calm one, the sister who saw sense. Kim couldn’t help herself. She’d never been as awkward as Jo. When it all started she was the quiet one, the easy one, the one who did as she was told. Which was why they began with her at the outset and that knowledge nagged at her even now. On that black night some of her dead, troublesome sister had rubbed off. Perhaps over the long strange years in Marken that piece of Jo inside had grown.

  For her anyway. Mia didn’t really hear her light, bright voice high in her head. Mia just pretended, like the good and loving sister she was.

  She lingered so long on that thought, the ice cream started to drip onto her black Goth clothes. Kim wiped off the stains and threw the cone into a bin. Why did she run? She wasn’t sure. Maybe it was the sight of that drum kit in the farmhouse. Or just the fact that they’d been promised freedom for so long, and all they got when it happened was a cruel and new kind of captivity.

  Where to go?

  Back. To Mia in the end. There was nowhere else. Volendam wasn’t the same. Without her family, without that warm bond around her, the place seemed alien. Strange. Hostile even.

  She closed her eyes, trying to recall something different from the past. A memory surfaced. A cafe bar where her mother sang. Once they’d allowed the girls up onto the stage, though children weren’t really supposed to be there.

  The place had the oddest name: the Taveerne van de Zeven Duivels. The Inn of the Seven Devils. The sign outside had scared her to begin with. But t
he devils were funny really. And inside colourful dummies hung from the ceiling, with dreadlocks and stupid grins, brandishing pitchforks at the people below.

  It was back towards the marina and the path to the bad place Simon Klerk knew about. The secret place he’d taken them until they said no. That was Mia’s idea. Keep stringing him along. One day he’d grow so desperate they’d make the most of that.

  One day.

  This was freedom. Penniless and lost in the place they once called home. Eating soft ice cream that tasted of chemicals. Watching the lazy lake and Marken across the water. It felt as if that long spit of land that ran out from the institution was laughing at her.

  Kim walked out of the town towards the marina. She remembered the bar as a grey, industrial-looking building down a cul-de-sac near the pleasure boat moorings. After ten minutes she saw it. Still there. Still with a sign at the start of the dead-end lane: a red devil leering, chasing a woman in a bikini who seemed to find it so very funny he was poking his pitchfork into her buttocks.

  The only people around were a couple of dog walkers wandering by the water’s edge. A good place to hide, she thought. Maybe that was what her mother had been doing all those years before.

  She wandered in. Just three men at the bar. One about forty. Two younger ones. They stared as she put her change on the counter and asked what it could buy.

  A Coke with rum appeared. The men came over. They weren’t local. She could hear the city in the coarse, beery voices. One of them bought a glass of old jenever and put it on the counter in front of her.

  Kim sipped at it, coughed on the strength of the drink, laughed as they laughed.

  ‘You’re a cute kid,’ the old one said. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘Drinking,’ she told them.

  They laughed again and bought another round. She didn’t touch the fresh glass that came. She was thinking of Mia. Her sister knew this place too. If she left the brothers’ farmhouse she’d surely find her way here. They were different in some ways but shared the same thoughts. The self-same steps that brought Kim to this remote, grey building, with its small windows and stink of beer, its demons leering from the low ceiling, would surely lead Mia here too.

  But when?

  ‘Want to go for a ride?’ the younger one asked, a look in his face she knew so well.

  Kim told him she needed the toilet. On the way back she stopped by the empty kitchen. There was a cutlery stand by the door, napkins, knives, forks, spoons and plastic bottles full of ketchup and mustard. The place smelled of fried food. Burgers and chips, not much else.

  She picked up a steak knife and tucked it down her jeans, pulling her shirt over it to hide the handle.

  ‘Do you want a ride or not?’ the kid demanded again when she got back and reached for the rum and Coke.

  She looked outside. From her seat she could see the long, empty track back to the road into Volendam. Mia would find her. She always did. It was just a matter of time.

  ‘In a while,’ Kim said.

  He went round the counter and put some music on the sound system. Loud, stupid rock. It didn’t drown out the sound of Little Jo’s voice in her head. Nothing would manage that. Ever.

  87

  Vos dropped Bakker at her flat in the city and told her to keep her head down for a while. Shoulders bent, still cursing herself, she shuffled through the door of her apartment block. She’d been like that when they first met, an awkward youngster from the provinces, someone who didn’t fit in the hectic, sophisticated city. That part of her character would never retreat. It was selfish of him but he didn’t want it to.

  After that he went into the office unconcerned about the storm he knew would be waiting there. Van der Berg took him to one side and they had a brief, informative conversation in the place reserved for such discussions: the washroom. When Vos got back to his desk he found a padded envelope by the computer. Inside was Aisha Refai’s tablet.

  De Groot called not long after. The commissaris was waiting in his office with Snyder. The man from Rotterdam looked even more pissed off than he did.

  ‘What a mess,’ he grumbled when Vos walked in. ‘You’re damned lucky I’m not suspending you.’

  ‘I didn’t know she was going to try to get back into Blom’s place. If the man had been a bit more forthcoming—’

  ‘Jesus Christ, Pieter! A police officer breaking into private property? She was under your command.’

  ‘She was. And yesterday when she wasn’t she was a hero.’ Vos turned to Snyder. ‘Did you find anything in the boathouse?’

  The forensic man frowned.

  ‘Signs of sexual activity. The only semen we’ve come up with belonged to Simon Klerk.’

  ‘A nurse?’ Vos commented. ‘With his own sex club by the water? There has to be more.’

  ‘I can only report on what I find. Not what you wish was there.’

  ‘Do you have any idea where the Timmers girls are?’ De Groot demanded.

  Vos was thinking about Bea Arends. She was the one who’d sent them to Blom’s place. Told them about the affair with Visser – which he felt sure was accurate. Then contradicted Blom’s claims about Freya’s threats. He wasn’t so sure about that. Bakker had asked an interesting question: why go back to Marken after her daughter had died there in an apparent suicide? It was an odd response. An unnatural one.

  ‘Vos! I asked a question.’

  ‘We drew a blank in Chinatown. That dump they stayed in was somewhere they found themselves. Someone set them up with the Englishwoman. That seems sure. Now . . . they must be out there on their own.’

  Which had to be quite frightening, he thought. Two young women, institutionalized for almost half their lives, thrust into the modern world with no one to turn to.

  ‘I’ve set someone looking at the buses and cabs to and from Waterland. It’s going to take a while.’

  ‘Relatives?’ Snyder wondered.

  ‘There aren’t any. Not still alive. No friends. No . . .’

  ‘Maybe they’re not there at all,’ De Groot cut in. ‘They’re just running.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Vos agreed. ‘Kaatje Lammers. We really need her back for interview about Vera Sampson. She’s a much more likely suspect than the Timmers girls. All the evidence suggests—’

  ‘Not much point until you find those two, is there?’ De Groot snapped.

  All the decisions were made already, Vos realized. He was there to hear them, not help frame them.

  ‘You’re right.’ He tugged at his hair, thinking. ‘Are you sure you want me on this case?’

  ‘How many other officers do you think I have?’

  ‘Thank you for the vote of confidence.’

  ‘For God’s—’

  ‘I really need to brief the night people now. Can we continue this later? Come down to the boat, Frank. I’ll get some pizza from round the corner. Sometimes I think better out of this place.’ He smiled. ‘And we can talk. Candidly.’

  The invitation came out of the blue. De Groot understood there was something behind it.

  ‘When?’ he asked.

  ‘Eight?’

  ‘Eight,’ the commissaris agreed.

  Vos went back to the office and packed the envelope with the tablet into his shoulder bag. Then he found Rijnders, who’d just come on duty for the night. It was a simple enough request. Look into Bea Arends, also known as Bea Koops. Check the files to see if she’d ever been in trouble with the police.

  ‘Did they sleep around a lot?’ he added. ‘The Cupids?’

  Rijnders blinked and said, ‘Is that a serious question?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘They were pop stars. Of course they slept around. I made a few calls last night to some people who hung about in their circles. Nothing came out of it. Except . . .they were real lads back then.’

  Vos told him about Bea Arends and her child with Frans Lambert. Rijnders looked disappointed he hadn’t managed to scoop up that piece of gossip the night before. />
  ‘Did any of the people you spoke to mention her?’

  ‘Not one. Was she a looker?’ Vos kept quiet. ‘Because if she wasn’t I doubt they’d remember. It’s the lookers that stick in people’s memory. The fat girl who ran the fan club . . . sorry.’

  There was something so loose, so pointless about the way these men lived that he couldn’t picture what it was like. One other point from the Arends interview came to him.

  ‘Jaap Blom’s wife. Lotte. Have you got anything on her?’

  He shuffled through his notes.

  ‘Lotte. Lotte. Lotte . . . Yes. Here it is. Lotte Gerritsen.’

  He went to the computer and pulled up some newspaper cuttings he’d assembled from the night before. Vos looked at the photos on the screen. Gert Brugman, young and full of life, clutching his bass in one hand, a glass of champagne in the other. Rogier Glas beaming at the camera, a girl on each arm. Young girls. No more than early teens. And Frans Lambert at the end, a lanky, shy-looking man with too much long black hair, not keen on being photographed at all. On his arm was a younger Lotte. She looked beautiful and happy and quite unlike the dry, sarcastic woman they’d met that afternoon.

  Her face was close up to Lambert’s. As if they were intimate. Behind he could just see a young Jaap Blom. He wore an interested, covetous look as he gazed on the band and the women with them.

  ‘Wait,’ Vos said. ‘Lotte Blom was Frans Lambert’s girlfriend?’

  ‘Pop stars, remember?’ Rijnders suggested. ‘They look really nice together, don’t they? Like a real couple.’

  They did. He checked the date on the cutting. Six months before the bloody events in Volendam. Then another clipping. Lotte and Jaap Blom’s wedding just a year later.

  ‘Now that,’ Rijnders said, ‘is what I call getting hitched on the rebound.’

  ‘Go back to what happened in Bali.’

  ‘Looking . . . for what?’ Rijnders wondered.

  ‘Lies,’ Vos said. ‘Lots and lots of lies.’

  ‘No, no, Pieter.’ He was getting exasperated. ‘There’s nothing out in Bali. I talked to people at the embassy. They sent me all the press cuttings. Look . . .’