The House of Dolls

by Hewson, David

  Her long fingers wound into his lank, greasy hair, shook his head. Hard. Menzo watched, chuckled.

  ‘You get to stay alive, boy!’ she yelled at them. ‘More alive than we ever was when we showed up here. You get to live somewhere warm and cheap and sunny. Where no one knows who you are. How hard can it be?’

  Their eyes were on the floor. Menzo put the long black weapon back on the table next to the others.

  ‘Not hard at all,’ he said then opened the case again, plucked a wad of the dollar bills, waved them in their faces.

  ‘What are we supposed to do?’ red kid asked.

  Battle won.

  ‘Whatever Miriam tells you. Flight goes to London at six o’clock. You’re in Cape Town for breakfast. Looking at a new life.’

  He patted the black gun.

  ‘You hear that? A new life. A little gratitude wouldn’t go amiss.’

  Menzo waited. Miriam Smith waited, standing back on her heels, folding her arms through the brown fur coat.

  ‘Thanks,’ said red kid obediently.

  ‘Yeah,’ said the blue one and stared at the cold stone floor.

  3

  As usual Sam had stayed with the woman Vos had befriended in the security office. He retrieved the little dog, said thanks, then led him outside. The rain was holding off. He placed the white and tan fox terrier in the front basket of his rusting black pushbike, adjusted the plastic windscreen at the front, pulled two elastic bands out of his jacket pocket and snapped them round the bottom of his wide, unfashionable, creased and shabby jeans to keep them out of the chain.

  Zappa had given way to Van Halen. He pulled out the phones and stuffed them into his pockets. One look at his jeans, the decrepit black bike, the dog in the front. Then he set off into the morning traffic for the ten-minute ride to the houseboat on the Prinsengracht.

  Cyclists and trams. Cars and motorbikes. Baffled tourists wandering among them all, not knowing which way to look.

  He’d asked Frank de Groot straight out: was there any news of Anneliese? The smallest piece of evidence to link her with the Prins girl apart from a doll? The silence that followed said everything.

  Just eighteen months old, the dog circled the basket three times then settled, got bored and, as the bike picked up speed past Leidseplein, rose to his haunches, put his long nose and beard into the wind, turning from side to side with delight, mouth open, white teeth in an apparent grin.

  The first spot of rain and he’d be back behind the windscreen. But spring was beginning to peek out from behind the grey shroud of winter. The lime trees showered the streets with their feathery seeds like tall statues scattering pale-green confetti for a wedding to come. The dog would enjoy his second lazy summer on the water, basking amidst the ragged vegetable and flower pots on the deck, enjoying the attentions of camera-happy tourists. More anonymously, Vos would too. And before the year was out the boat would be finished finally. He could try to think about what might come next.

  A furious ringing of bells from behind, an exchange of cross words in English. Then, as he entered the long straight cycle path that ran alongside the canal, Laura Bakker pedalled briskly to his side muttering curses about tourists.

  She was riding a rusty olive-green granny bike with high handlebars, sitting stiff-backed, a strand of red hair escaping to blow behind her in the spring breeze. The grey trouser suit looked as if it belonged in the 1970s. So, in a way, did Laura Bakker.

  One hand, he saw, worked her phone. Talking while she rode, not looking where she was going. Or, worse, texting. As he watched the thing nearly fell from her grasp. She only stopped it with the sudden, informed response of someone who recognized how truly clumsy she was.

  ‘Vos! Vos!’ Bakker cried when she’d got firm hold of the phone again. ‘Listen to me! Stop, will you? Commissaris de Groot wants to see you to discuss this in person.’

  A pleasure boat slowed on the canal. A pack of people in the front started taking pictures of them. Sam, paws on the front basket, little head into the breeze, shook his fur like a model posing for the camera.

  ‘Why on earth did De Groot send you? Of all people?’ Vos asked, keeping his eyes on the path ahead.

  ‘What’s wrong with me?’ She looked offended. ‘Just because I’m from Dokkum . . . it doesn’t mean I’m a moron.’ A glance towards Marnixstraat. ‘Whatever anyone thinks.’

  ‘I didn’t say that,’ Vos muttered then wove through a crowd of visitors wandering across the cycle track and quickly rode on.

  ‘Your dog’s very cute,’ Bakker noted as she caught up again. A smile then. For a moment she looked like a naive student fresh out of college trying to persuade the world at large to take notice and treat her seriously.

  ‘You don’t know him,’ Vos said.

  ‘I always wanted a pet.’

  He stiffened with outrage.

  ‘A pet? Sam’s not a pet.’

  Laura Bakker seemed worried she might have offended him.

  ‘What is he then?’

  The gentle rise of a bridge approached. Vos pedalled harder, left her behind again, took his hands off the handlebar, throwing up both arms in despair.

  The tourists tracking them on the canal launch loved this even more. An argument among locals. A lover’s tiff even.

  She was back by his side quickly, more of her red hair free now, flying back beyond her shoulders.

  ‘This is childish,’ Laura Bakker declared.

  ‘Being pursued along the canal by a wet-behind-the-ears junior. That’s childish,’ he complained, and realized how petulant he sounded. ‘Arrest me and have done with it.’

  ‘I can’t arrest people. I’m not allowed. Commissaris de Groot doesn’t believe Katja’s trying to extort money from anyone. He thinks this is to do with your daughter’s case . . .’

  Enough. He put out a hand to steady the dog then brought the bike to a sudden halt. The little animal yapped gleefully as if this were all a game.

  ‘I told you. Frank called me this morning,’ he repeated as Laura Bakker stopped by his side. ‘No one demanded a ransom for my daughter. No one gave me the chance to save her. If—’

  ‘Did you have much money?’

  ‘I’d have found it. If he’d asked. But he didn’t. For that or anything else. Anneliese was there one day. Then . . .’

  Three years the coming July. It might have been yesterday. Or another lifetime altogether. Tragedy occurred outside normal time, everyday conventions. It possessed a bewildering ability to fade and grow brighter simultaneously. There was no such thing as closure. That was claptrap for the counselling services. Only a pain so insistent it eventually became familiar, like toothache or the ghostly ache of a missing limb.

  ‘I’m fed up arguing,’ she said briskly. ‘Commissaris de Groot says he needs your help. You and him are supposed to be friends. It’s not like it’s the only thing he’s got on his mind.’

  Vos growled, a habit he’d picked up from the dog, then started pedalling again. She kept up, legs pumping at a steady, leisurely pace, big boots occasionally slamming against the frame. A gawky, awkward young woman. The kind of clumping, bumbling ingénue from the provinces that Marnixstraat’s hardened city officers would pounce on and devour in an instant.

  ‘Of course it’s not,’ he said, making an effort to sound reasonable. ‘This is Amsterdam. How could it be?’

  The houseboat was almost invisible from the road, an ugly black hulk marooned in the Prinsengracht beneath the line of the pavement. The cheapest on the market when he and Liesbeth sold the apartment, split the money, went their separate ways. It needed so much work and he couldn’t afford even half of it on the pittance of a cut-down, early retirement police pension.

  ‘There’s a crook called Theo Jansen in the appeal court today,’ she added. ‘According to what I hear they think he’ll go free.’

  Another sudden stop. This time he forgot to reach for the dog. Sam barked testily as he was flung against the front of the wicker basket.
>
  ‘Sorry, boy,’ Vos murmured and reached out to stroke his wiry fur. ‘What?’

  ‘This Jansen chap’s in front of the judge this afternoon. Likelihood is he’s on his toes straight after . . .’

  They’d almost cycled past the place. The court lay along the Prinsengracht too, close to Leidseplein. Most of Pieter Vos’s working life, the police station, the courthouse, the cafes and brown bars of the Jordaan where he retreated to talk and think, lay within walking distance of his ramshackle houseboat.

  ‘If the idiots let Theo out the first thing he’ll do is start a war,’ he said. ‘Frank knows that as well as anyone. I hope he’s prepared. What in God’s name are they thinking?’

  ‘They don’t have much choice. You didn’t stay to finish the job, did you?’ She had a harsh and judgemental tone to her flat northern voice when she wanted. One that seemed old for her years. ‘That’s what they reckon in Marnixstraat. You quit and someone else screwed up in your place.’

  A council boss’s daughter either kidnapped or demanding a ransom for herself. The city’s former gang lord about to get out of jail, looking for revenge against the Surinamese crook who’d seized his territory, the coffee shops, the brothels, the drug routes, while Jansen was in prison.

  Pieter Vos could understand why his old friend was worried.

  ‘You’ve got a lot to say for yourself, Aspirant Bakker. Not much in the way of tact.’

  She leaned closer. Pointed a long finger in his face. Chewed nails, he noticed. No polish. No make-up on her face.

  ‘I didn’t join the police to learn tact. De Groot told me to bring you in.’ She had green eyes, very round, a little on the large side, now gleaming with a mixture of determination and outrage.

  ‘That’s what I’m going to do. If I have to follow you around all day.’

  He stifled a smile and pushed the bike gently forward again.

  ‘At the risk of repeating myself, I’m no longer a police officer.’

  The boat looked dreadful in the strong spring sun. Peeling black paint. A shrivelled and desolate garden around the deck. The railings rusty. The wood rotten in places. In front of the bows, by the next mooring, a small dinghy sat half-flooded in the dank canal water, just as it did the day, almost two years before, when Vos moved in.

  This casual neglect, a lack of care and worry, helped him feel easy in this quiet and leisurely part of the city. The Drie Vaten bar by the bridge to Elandsgracht. The little shops and restaurants. The people more than anything. The Jordaan was home. He couldn’t imagine being anywhere else.

  A portly figure strode out from the foot of the street, near the statues of Johnny Jordaan and his band. In his shabby jeans Vos never thought of himself as old. Nor did most of those he met as far as he could work out. They seemed to treat him like an odd adolescent, trapped in amber in his houseboat, listening to old rock, visiting the nearby coffee shop for a smoke from time to time, lingering over beers in the Drie Vaten.

  Seeing Frank de Groot gave him pause for thought. At forty-nine the boss of Marnixstraat was just ten years his senior. But he looked like a man well into middle age now, lined face, neatly clipped dark hair and tidy moustache, both too black to be real. His wan, watery eyes appeared tired and worried. A gulf had emerged between them. Vos had gone nowhere, gone backwards maybe, since he locked himself in the houseboat on the Prinsengracht. De Groot had stayed in post and that had marked him.

  ‘Pieter! Pieter!’ De Groot rushed up and forced a small package into Vos’s hands. ‘I thought I might catch you here.’

  ‘Here’s where I live, Frank. Where else would I be?’

  ‘Hanging round the Rijksmuseum,’ De Groot replied with a glint in his eye. ‘In the Drie Vaten eyeing up that pretty woman behind the bar. Not fixing your damned boat that’s for sure. This dinghy . . .’

  De Groot moaned about the half-sunken boat every time they met.

  With a sudden clatter Laura Bakker turned up, shot out her long legs, slammed her heavy boots on the ground.

  ‘I was on my way to Marnixstraat,’ Vos said. ‘Aspirant Bakker briefed me.’ The green eyes were on him, surprised. ‘She did a good job. All the same I can’t help you.’

  ‘Cheese!’ De Groot patted the little package. ‘I got it from that shop you like. Kaashuis. They said it’s straight from the farm. It’s Limburger . . .’

  The dog was wrinkling its nose at the package.

  ‘You’re trying to bribe me with cheese? This is pathetic.’

  De Groot nodded.

  ‘True. Please. Can’t we talk? Fifteen years we worked together. It’s not a lot to ask.’

  The commissaris wore a fixed smile.

  ‘You’re looking . . . bohemian, Pieter. More so than ever I’d say.’

  Vos climbed off the bike, lifted Sam out of the basket, found the lead in his pocket and a spare bag from the supermarket.

  He extended the loop of the leash to Bakker and held out the bag.

  ‘You wanted a pet. Time to discover what it’s like. Clean up after him. He can’t do it for himself and there’s a fine if you leave it.’

  ‘I didn’t join the police force to walk dogs,’ she complained.

  ‘Indulge us,’ De Groot growled.

  His voice could turn from amicable to threatening in an instant. She snatched the bag and the lead then bent down and cooed at Sam.

  ‘Don’t let him beg for food,’ Vos ordered. ‘And keep him away from other dogs. He doesn’t know he’s little.’

  The two men watched Bakker chain her bike to the canal railings then wander down the canal, behind the happy, wagging tail of the proudly strutting terrier.

  ‘That was a dirty trick,’ Vos said.

  ‘What?’ De Groot asked, all innocence.

  ‘Sending me the office dunce and hoping I’d take pity on her.’ Vos stared at the wax paper package in his hands. ‘I hate Limburger.’

  ‘I’m not a cheese man, am I? She’s not a dunce, Pieter. Didn’t choose to be born in Dokkum. Kid just doesn’t fit.’ He thought for a moment then added, ‘Also I think she may believe in God.’ De Groot shook his head. ‘What the hell she’s doing here . . . I’m sorry. I thought she’d mess that up too. Why do you think I turned up?’

  Vos lifted his bike onto the boat deck.

  ‘Do I have to beg?’ De Groot asked. Then he pointed to the half-sunken dinghy next to Vos’s home, the empty hull covered by a grubby tarpaulin. ‘I’ve told you a million times. You should do something about that. It’s against the law.’

  Vos put his hands to his head and sighed.

  ‘It’s . . . not . . . my . . . boat. Remember?’

  De Groot hopped from one foot to the other, apologetic, but only mildly.

  ‘Stuck next to your place like that. Looks like yours.’

  ‘Inside,’ Vos ordered then walked down the gangplank and threw open the tiny wooden door to his home.

  4

  ‘De Groot wants us to go to Marnixstraat,’ Liesbeth Prins said. ‘Wim? Are you even listening?’

  His office was one of the most palatial in the city hall on Waterlooplein. Long windows, a view. A feeble spring sun hung over the city beyond the window: the canal, the mansions and corporate headquarters, then the sprawling, chaotic community of De Wallen. There were more than eighty thousand people in the tightly enclosed fiefdom of central Amsterdam. Six months before, his Progressive group had seized a surprise number of seats in the elections then forged a fragile alliance with the tiny anti-EU Independence Party. And in the hard bargaining for seats that followed, Prins had won just what he wanted: the role of vice-mayor, with a specific brief.

  He was forty-eight, a tall, imposing, unsmiling man. Liesbeth had known him since she was a teenager, though most of her life was spent with Pieter Vos. Now he’d risen from rich city lawyer to full-time politician on the city council, and a part of her had come to wonder: was that why he needed her? To complete the picture?

  ‘I can’t waste more time on her gam
es,’ Prins said flicking through one of the many reports on his desk. ‘De Groot should have better things to do. God knows—’

  ‘You think she can be that heartless?’

  He took hold of her hands, made her sit down. Looked into her eyes. A big man. A sad man in some ways. There was never the familiarity, the humour, the playful closeness she’d shared with Vos.

  ‘I know her better than you. She’s been like this ever since Bea died.’

  ‘Katja’s sick.’ Her voice faltered. She felt cold. Ill maybe. The black dress she’d picked that morning hung loose on her skinny frame. ‘Christ, Wim. I know you never liked the fact she wasn’t so bright. Not the star pupil. Some genius to take over your firm one day. But she’s still your daughter . . .’

  Prins placed the report on the desk. She saw the name on the cover in bold black letters: De Nachtwacht.

  The Night Watch. The title taken from the city’s most famous painting, Rembrandt’s massive master work in the Rijksmuseum. A group of armed militia men about to patrol Amsterdam, to keep the city safe. Prins gave the same name to the key element in his election campaign the previous autumn. A promise to clean up De Wallen once and for all. No half-hearted measures any more. No compromises. From the start he’d pledged to make life unbearable for the dealers, the coffee shops, the brothels, the pimps and hookers who’d been there for decades.

  No one expected him to win. But with the endless round of recession and austerity the popular mood had become febrile and unpredictable. People were looking for a change, any change. Then the Independence Party began to pick up votes on the back of suspicion about Brussels and the EU. They sensed an opportunity and joined the clamour. De Nachtwacht turned from a minor politician’s pipe dream into a hazy commitment that put him second-in-command in the council, with the one man above him, the Labour party mayor, happy to stand back from De Nachtwacht entirely and watch from a distance the developing furore about its implementation.

  ‘This,’ Prins said, tapping his finger on the report, ‘is more important than Katja now. I can’t help her any more. I’ve tried. But maybe someone else’s child—’