The House of Dolls

by Hewson, David

  The black guy was right. No one would see the boat. They’d wait there until a call came. From someone inside Miriam said after she’d brought them the cones of greasy fries.

  He didn’t like that much. It was important to see things for yourself.

  Menzo probably had other people around. They’d be watching too. They’d see the two of them climb the rickety steps, look round the broad cobbled road outside the courthouse.

  So what? If they did what Menzo wanted they were fine. If they didn’t . . .

  He wasn’t going to think about that. He loved his sister. Wished she hadn’t come all the way to Amsterdam on a wisp of hope and a forlorn prayer.

  ‘Stay here,’ he said. ‘I’ll be back in a minute.’

  Then he jumped from the dinghy to the platform at the bottom of the ladder, tied up the boat the way his uncle showed him. Went up the ladder.

  More trees shedding green leaves on the damp, slow day. Police cars. People, lawyers and clients he guessed, smoking outside a severe stone building.

  As he watched, an unusual-looking man with long hair and a young and striking face cycled to the main doors and started talking to the security officer there. He wore old clothes, almost ragged. Behind him, pedalling hard to keep up, was a tall red-haired woman, pretty but anxious, just as oddly dressed.

  Another check of the cheap digital watch on his wrist, one of the few things that had come with him from Paramaribo. Almost three o’clock.

  He walked along the waterfront, found the ladder again, went back down to the dinghy.

  ‘I’m hungry,’ red kid moaned.

  ‘You’ll have to wait,’ he said. ‘We got work to do.’

  15

  The last time Vos met Theo Jansen was two weeks before Anneliese disappeared. The encounter was friendly enough. One hour in the gang boss’s compact, unostentatious house near Waterlooplein, his daughter in attendance. No lawyer. Jansen thought he didn’t need one and he was right. Vos was fishing. Jansen didn’t take the bait. Michiel Lindeman didn’t get any criminal work until Klaas Mulder took over the anti-gang unit in Marnixstraat.

  Now, as then, Jansen sat next to his stocky, unsmiling daughter Rosie. When he was in post Vos had tried to understand everything he could about the man who, for a while, was the most powerful home-grown crook in Amsterdam. He’d learned about Jansen’s modest childhood and his genuine love for his only child. His ruthless treatment of those who betrayed him and how this was matched by the utmost loyalty for any who stayed on his side.

  What Vos found served to paint a portrait of an ordinary Amsterdammer who turned criminal through accident and opportunity not design. Theo Jansen saw himself as a necessary evil. Someone would run the drug business, control the red-light cabins and the brothels, keeping the dark side in order, maintaining a comfortable status quo in which criminal activity was ring-fenced from ordinary life as much as possible. In Jansen’s eyes it made more sense for a Dutchman to take that role. Better that than one of the many foreigners who’d been jostling for underworld power for the last three decades.

  Earlier that day the judge had listened to Lindeman and decided Jansen could be released on bail pending a legal review. All he had to do was give an undertaking to stay away from his former associates and report regularly to the police, two conditions to which he readily agreed. The case would be considered in the summer. Until then – and after probably – he’d be a free man.

  The hearing seemed so straightforward that Jaap Zeeger, the man whose evidence first sent Jansen to jail then freed him, hadn’t needed to come to court.

  ‘I didn’t do any of this,’ Jansen said as they sat down in an interview room in the basement of the courthouse. To Vos’s eyes he looked more like a genial Santa Claus than ever. ‘You know that.’ He glanced at the woman by Vos’s side. ‘Who’s your friend?’

  ‘A police officer,’ Vos told him before Bakker could speak.

  Jansen laughed. A gruff, friendly sound. Then ran two fat fingers through his full white beard.

  ‘They really do get younger, don’t they? I’m sorry about your girl. Genuinely. If I’d known anything I’d have passed it on. That kind of thing’s unforgivable.’

  Vos thought for a moment then said, ‘I still don’t understand why you heard nothing. Those big ears . . .’

  Jansen tweaked them beneath the white hair, a sad smile on his broad face.

  ‘It wasn’t someone from our side of the street. Not Dutch. Not even those foreigners.’

  ‘Jaap Zeeger . . .’

  ‘It wasn’t him either. Jaap’s a little fool. Someone fitted him up, Vos. You know that as well as I do. What we do is business. And that wasn’t. Sorry.’

  Two days after Anneliese went missing they’d searched Zeeger’s apartment following an anonymous phone call. Found a girl’s skirt, a blouse. The same clothes she’d been wearing when she disappeared. And a doll much like the one sent to Marnixstraat with her hair and blood. Vos dragged the trembling little crook into the station, screamed at him, which was out of character. Got screamed at by the terrified Zeeger in return.

  Something didn’t fit from the start. Jaap Zeeger was a deadbeat street criminal, a runner for Jansen’s dope and prostitution rackets. He didn’t have the intellect or the organization to play such games.

  Then forensic came back with the news that the clothes were new, unworn. There was nothing on the doll to connect it to Anneliese. Someone had sent them to Zeeger hours before they’d got the anonymous tip-off. One more twist in a savage game that seemed designed to taunt and torture.

  ‘Where is he now?’ Vos asked.

  Jansen looked puzzled.

  ‘I don’t know. Lindeman said he might have to come to court. The judge decided he didn’t need him. Talk to Michiel. Maybe he can help. You don’t have an address?’

  ‘If we did we wouldn’t be asking, would we?’ Laura Bakker said.

  ‘Oh dear.’ Jansen laughed. ‘She’s got a country mouth on her, hasn’t she? What do you want Jaap for? He’s just a sad little junkie. That clown Mulder leaned on him hard. I don’t bear grudges. I hope they’re grateful.’

  ‘We’re going home,’ Rosie Jansen said. ‘My father’s put up with enough from you people. I won’t . . .’

  The big man waved at her to be quiet.

  ‘Don’t talk to Vos like that. He doesn’t deserve it. A city needs good policemen. We won’t hear from him again.’ He leaned forward and looked at both of them. ‘I won’t give you reason. You’ve got my word . . .’

  Bakker threw her notebook on the table, tapped the page with her pen. Jansen raised an eyebrow, went quiet. Looked at her. Looked at Vos.

  ‘Zeeger’s been staying in a drug house off Warmoesstraat,’ Bakker said. ‘With Katja Prins. Know anything about that?’

  ‘I’ve spent the last two years in jail. How would I?’

  Rosie Jansen got to her feet, leaned over, took Bakker’s pen and scribbled something on the pad.

  ‘Talk to Lindeman. There’s his number. He fixed the affidavit. He dealt with Jaap. Not us. We’re leaving now. Dad?’

  Jansen rose from his seat, hugged her, smiled, patted her back.

  The release order meant he had to go straight to his house and stay there, reporting into Marnixstraat every evening. Jansen looked happy enough with that idea.

  ‘Have we fixed a car for you, Theo?’ Vos asked.

  ‘You can keep your car,’ Rosie Jansen said. ‘He wants to walk.’

  ‘Maybe get a beer along the way,’ Theo Jansen added dreamily.

  Vos frowned.

  ‘You’re still covered by a court order. We should take you. Laura?’

  Bakker closed her eyes, rolled back her head.

  ‘I’m running a cab firm service for crooks now?’

  Jansen laughed.

  ‘I like this one, Vos!’ He beamed at Bakker. ‘I don’t need a cab, kid. But your boss can join us for a beer if he wants. You too if you’ll fetch and carry . . .’

/>   He didn’t wait for an answer before striding upstairs, past guards and lawyers, past anxious faces and a couple of relieved ones.

  Vos liked this place mostly. He’d won here more than he’d lost. That wasn’t luck. It was preparation, work and good judgement. Had Klaas Mulder shown the same when he prosecuted Theo Jansen the genial old gang lord would never have set foot out of jail.

  Two huge wooden doors, manned by security guards, blocked the entrance. Glass windows above them. The feeble spring sun rose beyond out of a dull, rainy sky. Jansen beamed at the light and said, ‘See? That’s what freedom looks like.’

  Santa Claus, Vos thought again. The beard had got bigger, whiter in jail.

  He couldn’t understand why there wasn’t a specific police team in place. If he’d been the one setting Jansen free the old hood would have gone home in a squad car with a couple of uniformed men by his side.

  Bakker called the lawyer on the stairs up. Grimaced and said he was on voicemail. She’d left a message.

  ‘We don’t leave messages,’ Vos told her.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because Pieter Vos likes to see your face when he talks to you,’ Jansen broke in. ‘Listen to this man, young lady. You might learn something.’

  Vos took no notice. The courthouse was different. They’d redecorated. The place had lost its old patina of dust and age. It was now functional, modern, as boring as any other office in the city.

  In the corner one of the uniformed officials was struggling to get into the shadows to make a phone call.

  Vos always noticed the furtive, found it interesting. So he watched the man. The way he had his hand over the phone. The shifty, restless cast in his eyes. As if he wanted to be invisible.

  This kind of conversation happened in courts all the time, between lawyers and clients. They were rarely conducted by men in uniform.

  ‘Bye,’ Theo Jansen called and Vos heard the familiar creak of those old wooden doors. They hadn’t been oiled of late anyway.

  Laura Bakker came off a short call to the station, livid.

  ‘This was a total waste of time. Prins has left Marnixstraat now. De Groot’s furious with us. What are we supposed to—?’

  ‘Shush,’ Vos said and put a finger close to her mouth.

  She looked at him speechless.

  Vos turned to the doors. Theo Jansen stood on the threshold, breathing in the fresh air, beaming at the pale and lifeless sky, his daughter by his side trying to persuade him to walk down the steps.

  ‘This is wrong,’ Pieter Vos said to no one.

  ‘What is?’ Bakker asked.

  ‘Everything.’

  A metallic rattle from outside near the canal, like the chatter of a mechanical beast. Jansen’s head turned towards the source. But by then Pieter Vos was running, arms flying, shouting, to the big man silhouetted in the doorway, to the guards, to anyone.

  16

  When they climbed the rusty iron ladder, began walking down the road, semi-automatic in one hand, pistol in the other, red kid was trembling, pumped-up, scared. A few steps down the street he found a stray pigeon flying straight at him, grey wings flapping into his face.

  Flung his arm in the air, caught the trigger.

  A rattle of fire up into the gloomy sky, a shower of feathers and blood raining around them.

  ‘A bird,’ blue kid said. ‘Shit.’

  They were close enough to make out the man from the picture, standing at the top of the steps, smiling stupidly at the wan day.

  Stocky. White beard, Father Christmas but not the kind you’d pick a fight with. A big woman was with him, screaming, struggling to get in front of him like a shield.

  Too far away. They were idiots in too-bright clothes, walking by the side of the canal carrying Jimmy Menzo’s heavy weapons like bad extras from a lousy movie.

  ‘Shit,’ blue kid said again, stopped and thought, ‘All this down to a bird.’

  There were things you could plan for. And things that just happened.

  He walked to the edge of the canal, threw the guns in the dull, grey water, turned and ran away.

  17

  Vos got outside, yelled at Jansen who stood transfixed by his first sight of the outside world in two years, almost oblivious to the figure in bright shiny red running, weapon in each hand, towards him.

  A second burst of fire. Glass flew from the windows of a couple of cars parked near the stone steps to the court, ripped dust from the walls.

  Then Theo Jansen moved. Turned slowly, threw off Vos’s hands, those of his daughter, pushed her back towards the courthouse, pushed Vos too, strode in behind them.

  ‘Doors!’ Vos yelled once they were inside.

  Four men, five, in court uniforms raced to close them.

  A heavy iron bar fell across the double slabs of wood, locked into place. Vos made them stand back, retreating into the dark of the atrium.

  The windows were too high to represent any danger. But there was shooting outside. Two weapons. A semi-automatic. A handgun. Vos watched the glass shatter, the shards rip into the air and fall onto the patterned tiled floor.

  A high-pitched, foreign voice screeched something.

  Two uniformed cops had appeared from somewhere. Handguns out, ready. Trapped like the rest of them.

  Another rip of shells through the broken windows, glass flying everywhere. The people inside stayed quiet, eyes on one another. A second burst. More glass. No one spoke.

  After a little while the world beyond the door fell silent. Then came the wail of sirens from somewhere, and the sound of voices. The shape in red was surely gone.

  Theo Jansen was on a bench seat, daughter next to him, face like thunder.

  Vos walked over, sat next to him, shrugged.

  ‘You can’t go home, Theo. Not like this. I’m worried about your safety.’ He paused then added, ‘I’m worried about what you might do.’

  ‘I’m a free man . . .’ Jansen began.

  ‘Tomorrow maybe. Not now. Laura?’

  She looked paler than ever. No one heard gunfire much in Amsterdam. It was probably her first time.

  ‘Are you OK?’ Vos asked.

  She nodded.

  He called De Groot, told him they had to go back to the courthouse cells.

  ‘You’re not a cop any more, Vos,’ Jansen snarled when he came off the phone. ‘You’re a burned-out wreck living like some hippie bum in a dump of a boat. I hear things. You don’t tell me what to do.’

  ‘True,’ Pieter Vos agreed. ‘But Frank de Groot’s still commissaris and he agrees with me. You’ll stay in custody one more night until we know—’

  An explosion of curses. Jansen was up and towering over him. The two uniformed men came over.

  Then his daughter was there, hand on his burly arm.

  Vos had never got on with her. The father was so much easier.

  But she kissed his bearded cheek and said, ‘Dad. We can wait one more day.’

  Vos thanked her for that then went to look for the court attendant he’d seen on the phone.

  The man had fled the place by the back entrance. He got Bakker to check the staff records. A temp, brought in by an agency that very day.

  ‘His name . . .’ she began.

  ‘Doesn’t matter,’ Vos said.

  ‘I’ve got his name!’

  Doubt, he thought. That was what had eluded him of late. The ability to look at something and keep questioning it until some kind of answer came.

  ‘No,’ Vos said. ‘You haven’t.’

  18

  Margriet Willemsen lived in a small, tidy flat in a discreet block not far from the waterfront near the Maritime Museum. Prins had first visited with Alex Hendriks two months before to discuss business. She liked to hold private meetings at home, away from the prying eyes of the council offices. He wondered how many other men had been on the list.

  Now they were locked together, naked, sweating in her low double bed, writhing shapes outlined by the pale light struggli
ng through the closed curtains. She rode over him, dark hair moving gently with the steady relentless rhythm of her hips. Telling him what to do, when to move. Like this, entwined, a sighing, panting single creature, nothing else mattered. He could have thrown open the windows and let the world see. Wanted to. The risk was part of the excitement. But mainly it was her.

  Bea, his first wife, had turned crazy beyond belief. Liesbeth was proving almost as difficult. He liked their damage, the way he could marshal it, control them. Found the power he had enticing. But Margriet was different. Unlike any woman he’d ever been with. Fierce, dominating, determined. And so savage when she dragged him to bed he wondered if Liesbeth would see the marks of her teeth on his skin. Not that she looked any more. Or made love much and even then it was in the dark, a short, practical act of duty, not this savage, mindless display of force.

  Prins tried to put a gentle hand to her face as she rode him. She thrust it aside, gripped his fingers, pushed him hard into the damp sheets, tore at his hair. Her head came down, her hot breath fell on his cheek. A stream of filthy words in his ear. Then her tongue, damp and warm. And he was bellowing, lost in noise.

  A pause between them. She laughed, licked his cheek. Pulled back, hand on him, keeping the condom in place. Without a word she unpeeled the slick piece of thin plastic, climbed from the bed, walked to the bathroom. He heard a flushing sound. Then a radio. The news. The shower.

  Prins lay back on the bed, listening as his breathing regained a slow and natural rhythm.

  When she came back she wore a white dressing gown and a towel round her head. There was a book in her hand. He never saw her get it. There were so many in this place. Three sides of the bedroom were covered in bookcases. Fiction and biographies. Politics and poetry. She was good with words.

  Good with him.

  ‘You need to read this,’ she ordered.

  He looked. A paperback. An author he’d never heard of.

  ‘Why?’ Prins asked, and got off the bed.

  She came up, touched him, smiled.