Little Sister

by David Hewson

  ‘No one knows you’re missing, Jaap,’ she said. ‘I called your office and told them you’d gone away somewhere for a break. You could vanish off the face of the earth right now and no one would know. Or care. I wonder. How does that feel?’

  A memory from the previous night. Two of them. The metal barrel cold against his neck, a figure behind. He’d been slow and stupid. There was a handgun he’d kept from the old days, for when the gangs came calling. Blom couldn’t even remember where they hid it. His wife clearly did.

  ‘Lotte,’ he replied, quietly, seriously, with all the sincerity he could muster. ‘Whatever we’ve been through . . . whatever you think I’ve done . . .’

  She hung on Lambert’s arm, gazing at him, amused.

  ‘What I know you’ve done’s bad enough,’ she said. ‘What I think . . .’

  The man in black stepped forward. The long wooden bat slashed through the air again.

  Lotte Blom laughed at the way they shrank back.

  ‘Now’s the time to find out, I guess,’ she added.

  ‘What in God’s name do you want?’ Haas screeched. ‘Just say it.’

  ‘Girls,’ Lambert called.

  Two shapes in black with hair the colour of burnished copper emerged from the shadows. Then Bea Arends. Gert Brugman, limping and looking sick. Finally the two yokel brothers Blom knew from his Volendam days. They had broken shotguns in their arms.

  It was Kim who came up first. She looked wild-eyed, crazy. The other one held back.

  ‘Hello, Mr Blom. Mr Haas,’ the girl said. ‘Remember me?’

  96

  He let Bakker drive for once and sat in the passenger seat making calls and reading messages on his phone. It was a calm summer day, pure blue sky the colour of a starling’s egg, scarcely any traffic once they’d escaped the city.

  Vos got through five emails and three texts before they’d reached the open fields of Waterland. Then he took a call from Aisha Refai. When it was over he stretched back in the car and announced he was still hungry.

  ‘Isn’t this urgent?’ Bakker asked.

  ‘It would be if we knew where we were going. Why do people need computers of their own? I mean really . . . what’s wrong with a phone? We’ve got computers in the office.’

  Bakker told him he was in an odd and antediluvian mood.

  ‘What did Aisha have to say?’ she added.

  ‘We finally got something back on the call.’

  That was it.

  ‘The . . . call. Any call in particular?’

  ‘The first one.’

  ‘Still struggling, maestro.’

  He sighed and scanned the green horizon. They were past Broek headed for Monnickendam. Soon they’d be in Volendam and she’d no idea where exactly they were headed.

  ‘How did this start, Laura?’

  She knew this game by now. Vos was challenging her to reconnect the pieces of a fragmented narrative. It was a bit like doing a jigsaw and she hated puzzles.

  ‘With Mia and Kim Timmers getting let out of Marken. After which they went with Simon Klerk to that farmhouse for some reason. His reason I guess. Then they overpowered him and left him stark naked for his wife to discover.’

  Things had been moving so quickly she hadn’t had time to put all that together in her head. But it seemed to make sense.

  ‘They can’t have known she’d be mad enough to kill him. All the same that’s what kicked it off.’

  He frowned, looked at his watch then stared out of the window.

  ‘Didn’t it?’

  ‘You took the phone call,’ he said. ‘Supposedly from Ollie Haas’s old girlfriend.’

  ‘Ah.’ She remembered. ‘Yes. That.’

  ‘Who made it?’

  ‘His old girlfriend? I don’t know!’

  ‘Aisha finally got something back from the switchboard. It came from Marken. The institution. A landline.’

  ‘Visser?’ she asked.

  ‘Visser helped cover up whatever happened in that place. She was trying to hide things from us. No.’

  Volendam was five kilometres away. He’d have to tell her where to go soon.

  ‘Bea Arends then. Or Koops. From the kitchen.’

  ‘That’s my guess too. What Bea didn’t tell us is that one of the places she worked ten years ago was the Waterland hospital in Purmerend. The Sampson woman was a staff nurse there, dividing her time with Marken. They must have known each other.’

  The hazy picture was starting to turn clearer. Eighteen months before, Bea had come back and got a job in Marken under an assumed name. She found out nothing about her daughter’s death. But when the Timmers sisters were set for release she arranged for them to hide out in Amsterdam.

  Bakker tried to recall what the Arends woman had said the day before when Vos had asked why she’d never come to the police with their suspicions. The answer was simple: they had. To Ollie Haas. They’d been ignored.

  ‘Someone’s been dropping us breadcrumbs all along.’

  ‘Quite,’ Vos agreed. ‘And if Kim and Mia stayed missing they reasoned we’d be forced to take another look at Marken and what put them there.’

  ‘Maybe if Sara Klerk hadn’t killed her husband . . .’

  ‘No,’ he said in a low, aggrieved voice. ‘It wouldn’t have worked anyway. All the files were gone. In Marnixstraat. In Visser’s office too. If Veerman hadn’t kept his own . . .’

  ‘God. We really failed those people.’

  ‘We did,’ he agreed.

  ‘So it’s back to Bea’s place?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘She’s not there. I got a local car to check. Lotte Blom’s not at home. Gert Brugman neither. And Frans Lambert’s no more dead than you or me. It’s just . . .’ He closed his eyes and looked ready to go to sleep. ‘We’ve been strung along from both sides and I was too idiotic to realize. I thought it was just one.’

  Bakker stopped and waved at a smart red tractor waiting to cross the road and pull into a field by their side.

  ‘You’re so polite sometimes,’ Vos noted.

  ‘Country girl. Always give way to a farmer. Tractors are bigger than you for starters. So they’ve done a runner? Ollie Haas and Blom thought we might be on to them finally—’

  He groaned and she knew she’d said the wrong thing.

  ‘What—?’

  ‘They’ve had ten years to run away. These people think they’re untouchable. They know it. We’ve made them like that.’

  Out of Marnixstraat, just the two of them ready to think out of the box, things were starting to make sense.

  ‘Do you know what happens if people expect justice and you don’t give it to them?’ he asked.

  ‘Mostly . . . nothing,’ she said. ‘Thank God. Otherwise we’d be knee deep in angry vigilantes.’

  He roused himself in the seat and looked up. The town lay ahead, a collection of low roofs set against the placid silvery lake.

  ‘Mostly. There’s a white building coming up on the right. Before the roundabout. A bungalow cafe. Quaint place. White walls, black beams. Pancake house or something.’

  ‘I see it.’

  ‘Pull in there.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I’m hungry.’

  ‘A pancake house won’t be open at this time of day!’

  ‘I said. It’s a cafe too. People out here are . . . versatile. Independent. Strong-willed. I suppose you need lots of talents.’

  ‘It won’t be open.’

  Vos held up his phone for her to see. There was a mobile page on the screen: The Little Ducks Pancake House and Music Bar. We do breakfast too!

  ‘Thank you for keeping me in the picture as usual,’ she said then pulled off the road and into the empty car park.

  There was a sign along the way. A poster for a music night: ‘Remembering The Cupids’.

  Vos pointed it out.

  ‘Now there’s a coincidence, don’t you think?’

  Bakker growled.

  ‘You
can be really annoying sometimes, you know.’

  97

  In her black jeans and midnight T-shirt, sick of the cheap jewellery they’d bought, ashamed she’d got their beautiful hair dyed brown, Mia listened to her sister.

  This was the old Kim. The forceful, demanding creature she’d become in Marken. Ranting and raving. Throwing out accusations. Never listening much to the answers.

  Here, in the dry, hot dusty interior of the Kok brothers’ barn, hens clucking happily outside and the faintest drone of traffic from the main road into Volendam, they might as well have been seated in front of Irene Visser. It was never about confession there either. Their presence demanded nothing less than an act of release, a purging of all the pent-up fury inside them. And then, in the exhausted aftermath, simple, blunt obedience.

  Don’t tell. Never tell. You’ll only make things worse.

  Kim kept screeching at the two bound men in front of her, Frans Lambert and the rest of the audience swallowing every word. Mia went to her side and whispered, ‘Please, love. Not so—’

  ‘Shut it!’ the old Kim snapped. Then she bent her furious head into her sister’s ear and half-sang, half-whispered a single musical line.

  Love is gone and so am I.

  That was enough. Mia closed her eyes and found herself in the last place she’d ever wanted to be, even in the beginning. A young girl dressed in blue hot pants, sparkly scarlet shirt, patent red leather shoes pinching her toes, yellow hair tied back in a bun, cheeks heavy with make-up, mascara stinging her eyes, lipstick thick and greasy on her mouth. Walking up the steps onto the Volendam stage.

  Put on a show.

  That was what her mother said. But to Kim. It was always the easy, obedient sister who came first.

  Put on a show. Kim, give the gentlemen what they like. Your sisters can do their turn after. That’s why we’re here, girls. That’s what’ll let us leave this shithole forever. Just the four of us. The Timmers girls. Mother and her three daughters. Centre stage. No one’ll ever forget us then. Will they?

  But they did, Mia thought. So easily.

  Kim was back to shrieking at the policeman who’d found them that night. Yelling about his lies. The people he’d hidden. What they’d got up to, year after year and no one cared.

  Give the gentlemen everything they ask for. And then we walk away from the lot of them. That useless dad of yours too.

  ‘It’s why we’re here,’ Mia whispered.

  Ollie Haas tried to say something. A plea. A denial. The man in black yelled at him.

  The baseball bat went up.

  The baseball bat came down.

  The policeman screamed, his face a bloody mess.

  Blom was bellowing too. All around her they watched and didn’t move. It was like music. Another kind of performance, just as cruel as the ritual act the three of them had been forced to perform that distant balmy evening.

  Mia took a deep breath and walked up to Lambert before he could strike the next blow.

  ‘Don’t do this, mister,’ she said, putting a trembling hand on his arm, remembering what it was like to be a scared little girl on the Volendam waterfront all those years ago. Begging. Pleading. A small creature hoping against hope. ‘Not for us. We’re not . . .’

  Worth it, she almost said.

  Clawed fingers struck at her then, scratched her cheek, pushed her out of the way. Hands to her face she waited, expecting the pain that was to come.

  Because old Kim was here and in full flood. Fierce and uncontrollable, mad and wild.

  ‘She’s weak as a baby,’ her sister yelled, reaching out for the bat. ‘Let me. I’ll beat the bastards for you.’

  Lambert looked back at the rest of them. Gert Brugman sighed and stared at the dusty straw floor. Lotte Blom nodded. Willy Kok shook his head. His brother said, ‘Any more of this and I’m walking out of here, Frans. I thought you lot wanted to put things right. Not do more wrong.’

  No one spoke. Tonny shouldered his weapon and went for the door. Willy stayed all the same. Kim held out her shaking hand, trying to grab the bat. Lambert kept it from her, bent down in front of the bleeding Haas, the silent, sullen Blom.

  ‘Who killed them?’ he demanded, pushing the wooden stump hard into their faces in turn. ‘The family. Rogier. Who killed them? That’s what we want to know.’

  98

  An elderly couple, seventy at least, ran The Little Ducks Pancake House and Music Bar. They seemed surprised to get business before lunchtime, but grateful for it. The interior of the place was white walls with fake beams, neat wooden tables all carefully laid, paintings and photographs everywhere. At the end of the room stood a low wooden stage, a lone mike stand leaning at the back like a shiny drunken heron.

  Vos ordered pancakes. Bakker stuck to coffee. When the man had gone to the kitchen she said, ‘So this isn’t just a random stop for a bite to eat?’

  He checked his messages again. There were none. Then he got up and started walking round the walls, looking at the photos and the memorabilia. Bakker uttered a long, pained sigh and joined him. The place was like a shrine to The Cupids. Photos of them when they were young and starting out. Then in New York, playing the fool at the top of the Empire State Building. Picking up prizes. Posing with starlets.

  The woman came out of the kitchen with coffee in two old-fashioned china cups with saucers bearing biscuits.

  ‘You’ve seen our local heroes then,’ she declared, bringing them their drinks. ‘Those lovely boys came from Volendam. Back when they were doing the songs they wanted, you couldn’t beat them. All that later stuff . . .’ She winced. ‘Well, we can forget that now, can’t we? Poor lads. Time wasn’t kind to them. Never is if you’re in the music business I guess.’

  She placed the cups on the nearest table and wiped her hands on her apron.

  ‘Your girlfriend looks too young to remember but I reckon you do, mister.’

  Bakker looked ready to explode.

  ‘She’s my niece,’ Vos said quickly. ‘Didn’t something happen? Something bad?’

  The friendliness vanished from her face in an instant.

  ‘Lies. All them people from the city coming here telling their lies. Just because young Rogier liked to hand out sweeties to the kids. I ask you. Those lads never did anyone any harm. I’m not saying they were angels. You couldn’t be in jobs like that. Everyone worshipping you. There was a time when they couldn’t walk down the street without the ladies flocking round. Then, not long after, another time when it was just the fans like us, people who knew them, asking for autographs. Even though we had them already. Can’t have been easy. They didn’t do those terrible things some people said. Never would.’

  She walked up to the photos and pointed out a more recent one. An older, frailer Gert Brugman performing solo on what looked like the cafe stage.

  ‘They used to play here when they were teenagers and learning their tricks. Gert still comes back sometimes. Salt of the earth. Good Volendam folk. Here . . .’

  She led them down the room. In the corner, mounted on a plaque halfway up the wall, sat a sunburst guitar. Next to it was a pair of drumsticks and what looked like thick long strands of wire.

  ‘That was Rogier’s first electric,’ the woman told them. ‘My husband paid off the hire purchase on that when the lad was broke. Frans Lambert’s drumsticks. Some bass strings from Gert. We have a tribute band from time to time. Out here we still remember them for what they really were. Not all those nasty lies the press kept putting around.’

  Bakker reached out and plucked the strings on the guitar. They were slack and barely made a sound.

  ‘We’d buy more memorabilia if we could.’

  ‘Not easy after all these years I imagine,’ Bakker said.

  ‘Not easy when the people who’ve got it won’t sell,’ she grumbled. ‘I mean why hang on to stuff? Either have someone play it. Or let fans like us put it where people can see the things. I don’t get it.’

  Vos reached out and t
ouched the drumsticks.

  ‘He had a lovely golden set of drums,’ the woman said. ‘All glittery. We’d buy them if we could. But their relatives . . .’

  Vos had got Van der Berg to go through that option. Rogier Glas’s parents were dead. Lambert grew up with a single mother who’d moved to Florida. Brugman’s father still lived somewhere nearby but the two weren’t on speaking terms.

  ‘What relatives?’ he asked.

  She threw up a dismissive hand.

  ‘The kind you hope don’t come around at Christmas. I don’t even know they’ve got a right to own that stuff in the first place. I mean . . . why would Frans hop off and leave his drum kit with a pair of clowns who can’t even get a girlfriend for themselves let alone play the things?’

  Bakker said, ‘Perhaps he thought he was coming back?’

  The woman laughed.

  ‘Left it a bit late, hasn’t he? Only old folk like us going to pay to listen to him now. No one—’

  Vos’s phone beeped. He looked at the message and started to take out his wallet.

  ‘What relatives?’ Bakker asked again.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Vos cut in. ‘We have to go.’

  He placed a twenty note in her hand. The kitchen doors opened. The man walked out bearing a plate.

  ‘Go?’ he asked. ‘But I have cooked your pancakes. With my own hands. Here they are.’ He thrust the food at them. ‘Surely you’ve time for a bite.’

  Vos nodded, picked up a piece in his fingers and was wolfing the thing down as they got to the car, spilling pieces everywhere.

  He went to the driver’s side, wiping his hands on his jeans as he reached out for Bakker’s keys.

  ‘I don’t get it,’ she said. ‘Aren’t we supposed to ask who the relatives are?’

  ‘No need,’ he said, getting behind the wheel. She climbed into the passenger seat. ‘Aisha tracked it down finally.’

  He brought the car to life and floored the pedal down the dusty track back to the road.

  ‘Frans Lambert and the Kok brothers are cousins.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Someone walking their dog in Volendam called in this morning. She saw two men threatening a couple of visitors with a firearm outside a bar last night. There was a pair of girls with them. Got a number for their truck. It’s them.’