by David Hewson
‘Schuurman’s on a course! I told you!’
‘Laura and Aisha then. I’ll wrap up this up. Tomorrow. Those girls have to be in Waterland somewhere. But I can’t work with people I don’t know. My fault entirely. It’s how I am. Too old to change.’
There’d always been a subtle divide between them. It was only natural. De Groot was a manager. Vos a lieutenant in the field. There were aspects to both their roles that were best not shared at times.
‘Well,’ the commissaris said, standing up, holding out his big hand. ‘That’s settled then. Keep Bakker in check. Don’t go sticking your nose into the past any more than you need. Get those girls safe somewhere. When you’ve done that pull back Kaatje Lammers and ask her a few questions. Find out if they really did kill that Sampson woman. Then wrap it up. Let’s try and get things back to normal. Deal with whatever’s coming tomorrow instead of trying to dig up yesterday.’
‘I couldn’t agree more,’ Vos said and shook his hand.
Sam got to his feet, wagged his tail, held up his head to be stroked. De Groot knew what was required and patted him gently.
‘I spoke out of turn,’ he said, not looking Vos in the eye. ‘I’m sorry about that. Things haven’t been easy for you either. I should remember that more.’
He wandered over the gangplank. The American was leaving the Drie Vaten. He seemed no happier than De Groot shuffling off down the canal.
Vos looked at the bottle. Then at the dog, wagging his tail.
‘OK, boy,’ he said. ‘Let’s go for a walk.’
90
Schiphol was busy as usual. Holiday travellers. Parents lugging children around the sprawling airport, trying to keep them amused. Henk Veerman found a quiet corner to wait, then went through to the gate when the flight was called.
Everything on time. It was important to leave this to the last moment. Five minutes before the flight was boarding he called Vos’s number.
It took three rings then he heard the brigadier’s gentle, interested voice. Behind it there were people talking and music. Then the low murmur of what had to be a boat somewhere. A canal in Amsterdam. Veerman could picture it and wondered if he’d ever see that sight again.
‘Veerman here. How was your day, Vos?’
‘Busy. Much like yours I imagine. I’m sorry I never got out to Marken to see you. We need to talk.’
He paused. The boat got louder. The music too. Veerman could see this all so clearly now. One of the tourist cruisers idling down the broad open waters in the Canal Ring somewhere.
‘If you’re willing to talk, that is,’ Vos added. ‘Most people aren’t.’
‘I’m sorry.’ The flight desk people were getting ready, sifting through papers, looking at customers. Not long now. ‘Everything was such a mess. Irene. Those Timmers girls. That bastard Klerk. It’s as if . . .’ They called the business-class passengers and anyone with children. ‘It’s as if all this shit was waiting for us in the wings. Just ready to burst. We should never have let them out. I knew it. I didn’t have the guts to stop her.’
‘Were you aware Irene Visser was having an affair with Jaap Blom?’
Veerman laughed.
‘I never went near the private lives of my employees.’
‘Did you go near anything? Blom was making evening visits. Supposedly social ones.’
‘I’m sorry. Now’s not the time.’
‘Tomorrow then,’ Vos promised. ‘You will be brought in for interview. Whatever anyone else says.’
There were more announcements. Close now.
‘What’s your email address, Vos? I’ve something for you.’
Vos read out an official one in Marnixstraat.
‘I mean your private email address. You really don’t want this in the office.’
‘I don’t have a private email address. Just the work one.’
Veerman found this odd, but thinking about the man not entirely unexpected.
‘You do have a computer? Your own? At home?’
‘I’ve got a phone,’ Vos objected. ‘There are computers in the office. Why would I need one at home?’
‘Christ . . .’ A thought struck him. And this is a work number too?’
‘It’s my phone, Veerman. What is this?’
His seat was towards the front of the plane. They were boarding the back rows now.
‘This is me about to open Pandora’s box. Make things easy for you. I shouldn’t even be calling on this number. I—’
‘For God’s sake say what you want to say. I’ve had a long day.’
‘There’s something I want to send you. I can do it as a link. A text to someone. A private number. Get that? Private.’
Along the Prinsengracht, close to the old courthouse, near the bar Van der Berg loved when he didn’t want to be in the Drie Vaten, Vos pulled his notebook out of his pocket and read over Bakker’s personal mobile.
‘I’ll send it there,’ Veerman said down the line. ‘You will need a computer to access it. I strongly suggest you do not do this anywhere near Marnixstraat.’
Sam was pulling on the lead. Someone at a table outside the bar was offering him a chunk of hot dog.
‘Fine. I so much enjoy mysterious conversations late at night. Thank you.’
‘Welcome,’ the voice down the line said. ‘That detective of yours. The big, inquisitive one. Van der Berg.’
‘What about him?’
‘Tell him I’m sorry I hit him. I hope he wasn’t hurt.’
There was movement somewhere behind Veerman’s voice. An announcement. A flight number. The name of a place.
‘Irene and I . . . we thought we were doing the right thing. Someone had to look after those kids. We didn’t want the place closed. Not after we thought we’d fixed it.’
‘Stefan Timmers . . .’
‘She said he had some information going back years. He’d been using it against a few of the people. Blom among them I think, which is probably how she heard. I . . . we just tried to make things right. They leaned on us. They said it’d never happen again.’
The sound changed. More announcements. Vos could picture him going down a gangway.
‘We really need to talk,’ Vos said.
‘It’s only when you stop and stand back you realize how much you hate yourself. Apologize to him for me. I hope that what I’m giving you makes amends. A bit anyway.’
The line went dead. Vos scribbled down some notes on what he’d heard. Then he called Laura Bakker. She sounded sleepy and down.
Before she could say much he broke in, ‘You’ll get a text any minute. From Henk Veerman.’
A text?’ There was a message beep. ‘Oh. It’s here already.’
‘Good. I need you at the boat.’
‘Now?’
‘Now.’
After that he phoned Aisha Refai and Van der Berg. Then Vos walked the dog home, found the table at the back and picked at some chunks of cold pizza. Glass of wine in hand he made another call.
He was grateful she was the one who answered the phone.
‘What the hell do you want, Vos?’ Lotte Blom demanded. ‘Haven’t you caused enough trouble today?’
‘Not really. I’d like to know why you went out to see your old boyfriend Frans Lambert in Bali five years ago. When he was calling himself Bram Engels and pretending to be dead. After that I’d like to know where he is now. Think before you answer.’
There was a long pause. Then the line went dead.
91
The girls were upstairs when Tonny Kok’s phone went. Close to eleven. He was slumped in front of the TV with another beer, Willy snoring away in an armchair by the window.
Sometimes the council called late at night asking for some dyke clearances early the following morning. But that only happened when the weather had been extraordinary. This summer had been perfect. Dry, sunny, hot. The fields were full of rich grass, the water teeming with life, ducks feeding, fish and eels below. The kind of summer a man remembered from his
childhood. A sultry sort of Eden.
He looked at the number and realized it wasn’t the council.
‘Lotte,’ he said, taking the call in the kitchen so as not to disturb his brother. ‘You have heard?’
‘Heard what?’
‘The girls are loose. They’re here. One of them nearly got into trouble down that bar where Freya used to work.’
There was a deep sigh on the line then she said, ‘They’re with you?’
‘Ja. Did I not say that?’
‘Not exactly. Thank God.’
She told him about the call from Vos.
‘That man is clever,’ he said. ‘A decent kind of fellow for an Amsterdammer. His girl, that one from Friesland who had the trouble with Sara Klerk . . . now she is a good one. A diamond—’
‘We’ve waited,’ she cut in. ‘Long enough. They won’t do a thing. We can’t put it off any more. Gert and Bea, Frans . . . we’re all agreed.’ She waited then asked, Are you?’
Tonny Kok looked around the kitchen. They’d grown up here. The farmhouse was more than home. It was their world. A sanctuary in the green fields of Waterland. A place of safety, of comfort. Somewhere to hide at times.
‘Ja. I believe so.’
They’d had run-ins with the law aplenty. Drunken escapades. The odd fight. Never any dishonesty. That was plain wrong. They’d been brought up to hate lies and thieving. The Kok brothers’ distaste for it was deep in their blood.
‘Won’t be no turning back from this one, Lotte,’ he said. ‘Will there?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘There won’t.’
There wasn’t a lot to say after that. Just a lot to do.
92
The Drie Vaten had closed early for some reason. There were only security lights on. No music. No sign of life. It wasn’t yet midnight. Vos rang the bell and banged on the door, Sam by his side, puzzled and yawning on his lead.
Finally Sofia Albers came downstairs. She was in a blue nightgown, fluffy slippers on her feet. Her eyes were red and bleary.
‘This is bad. I’m sorry to wake you.’
‘What do you want, Pieter? I don’t feel so good. So I kicked everyone out early.’
The American friend, he thought. Something had happened.
‘I need your help. You’ve got that wireless connection. Internet. I’ve Laura coming round. Aisha and Dirk. We need to work.’
‘What? Don’t you have that on the boat?’
‘No. I’ve got a phone.’
‘Why don’t you go into the office?’
Sam took his chance and wandered past her legs until the lead stopped him.
‘Can’t. Don’t ask.’
Sofia opened the door and he came in. She bent down and took the lead off Sam’s collar. The terrier went over to the bar and found the dog bed behind the counter then curled up and fell instantly asleep.
The place smelled strongly of beer with a faint aroma of cigarettes behind. There were dirty glasses everywhere. This was so unlike her.
‘Make yourself coffee. Pour yourself a drink. Don’t care. I’m going upstairs. With any luck I’ll sleep.’
He didn’t know what to say.
‘Is there . . . anything . . . ?’
‘No.’
‘The American. Er . . .’
Names usually eluded him unless they were important.
‘Michael?’
‘Him.’
‘Gone.’
‘Sorry.’
She laughed.
‘I’m not. Or I am. One or the other. Or halfway in between.’
‘If you want to talk—’
To his surprise she came close and pecked his cheek.
‘Another time. You’re so sweet. So fragile underneath it all. No one’s ever going to want to touch you. They’ll wonder if you’ll break.’
That observation baffled him but all he said was, ‘Right . . .’
Sofia walked back to the stairs, patted the dog once and got a growl in return from the slumbering animal.
‘I just kept thinking about his wife and kids,’ she said, turning on the first step. ‘They’re on the other side of the world. He was never going to tell them. They’d never know. It still nags you. I still felt guilty. Dirty. Ashamed. Why? If it was never going to harm anyone? Not a single soul? Why?’
He came over, found Sam’s thin blanket and draped it over the dog.
‘It’s how we are I guess. Most people anyway.’
‘I suppose.’
‘I’m not that fragile by the way.’
Her hands went to her hips. The old Sofia Albers, a determined, individual woman, no one’s fool.
‘Is that so? Goodnight. Help yourself to anything you want. Don’t make a noise.’ She chuckled, a sound he liked. ‘I wouldn’t want the police on my back for staying open too late.’
Five minutes later there was a rap on the door. It was Laura Bakker with Veerman’s text on her phone. Within the next half-hour Aisha Refai had turned up followed shortly after by Van der Berg.
The detective looked round the empty bar and immediately started to clear up the dirty glasses, putting them in the machine behind the counter.
‘I hate grubby places,’ he said. ‘Worked in a beer dive once upon a time. You’ll be surprised to learn.’
Aisha was setting up her laptop and logging on to the wireless network.
‘No drinking,’ Vos ordered.
Van der Berg glared at him.
‘Of course there’s no drinking. Who wants what?’
Two coffees. One water. One orange juice.
Bakker passed her phone over to Aisha and asked, ‘Why are we here?’
Vos told them as succinctly as he could. Then broke the news that both she and Aisha would be welcome back at work the following morning. He wasn’t surprised that Bakker was suspicious about that.
‘How did you get De Groot to change his mind?’
Van der Berg knew how to work the coffee machine. He came over with two cups and the soft drinks on a tray.
‘See? I made a good waiter. Could always go back to it if I wanted.’
‘I asked a question,’ Bakker said.
‘I’m very persuasive when I choose to be,’ Vos told her.
Aisha was shaking her head. The link Veerman had sent to Bakker’s phone was for a public folder on a cloud storage service. There were eighteen gigs of material there.
‘Is that a lot?’ Vos asked.
‘Even I know that’s a lot!’ Van der Berg pointed out. ‘What is it?’
Aisha was bent over the laptop, face close into the screen. Such a natural position for her it seemed.
‘PDFs. Word files. Video. Pictures. There’s stacks of it. We could be here all night. Is there another computer we could use?’
Van der Berg went behind the counter and found the laptop Sofia handed out to regulars. Aisha put it next to hers on the long table.
‘Can you use both?’ Vos asked.
‘Sure.’ She gave him a look. ‘This is a public folder. Anyone with that link can see this stuff. No password needed.’
He pulled up a chair next to her and looked at the filenames. One seemed familiar. Van der Berg saw too. It followed the format for the Marnixstraat filing system. Aisha opened it and all four of them looked at the document names there.
‘Where did you get this?’ Van der Berg asked.
Vos told them.
‘These are the case files, aren’t they?’ Bakker asked. ‘The ones I was looking for. The ones that got deleted.’
The sisters had gone straight into Marken after they were detained. The medical staff there would have access to all the police reports about their case. De Groot might have managed to kill the copies within Marnixstraat. Whoever put him up to that never realized there were identical ones held in the institution, presumably by Irene Visser and her colleagues.
‘What’s the rest of this stuff?’ Van der Berg asked.
‘Big files,’ Aisha said. ‘Video. Lots of it. Th
e connection here’s just home broadband. This is going to take a while. Especially with two of us working down the same line.’
There was a folder called SimonK. Vos jabbed a finger at it. She opened the first video file there. A younger Kaatje Lammers’ face came up on the screen. Perhaps thirteen or fourteen. Naked, grinning. Doped or drunk. The segment was shot from above, presumably by the man holding the camera. It wasn’t hard to tell what she was doing.
‘That,’ Bakker said, pointing at the pink satin coverlet and the toy penguin to the girl’s right, ‘is the Flamingo Club.’
Aisha checked the file data. It had been recorded six years before. Then she brought up another video. Bakker looked away. It was another girl, this time with a man visible from the back only, face hidden, portly, middle-aged. The kid was red-faced and crying with fear and pain.
‘We get the idea,’ Van der Berg moaned. ‘That’s enough for me. I can’t watch this stuff. Sorry.’
He was one of the most analytical officers Vos knew. Someone who could quickly skim through case files and form a picture of what lay behind them. Vos gave him the bar laptop and told him to check through Haas’s original investigation.
Aisha shrugged and killed the videos.
‘This is going to take days. Weeks.’
She found another folder. One of the files had the name of a local TV news programme. Aisha clicked on it.
The recording was shaky and old. A bright sunny day, summer on the Volendam waterfront. A news reporter’s voiceover was talking about the charity talent contest supported by The Cupids. They were all there on three chairs set apart by the stage. Rogier Glas looking confident. Frans Lambert, a tall, powerful man with lots of hair who didn’t smile much. Gert Brugman, red-faced, clutching a beer.
It was impossible not to watch. A tall, striking blonde woman led three young girls onto the stage. She was wearing a tight, short skirt. The kids were in scarlet shirts and skimpy hot pants. A few of the men were catcalling as they walked onto the platform.
Freya Timmers introduced herself and then the girls: Kim, Mia, Little Jo. Then said a brief thank you and waved at a stern-faced man in a fisherman’s smock by the side of the stage. Her husband, Gus.
They watched in silence. A cruel and bloody fate was waiting for these people around the corner. And here they were, alive, engaged, seemingly happy, thinking a bright and starry future lay ahead.
