The House of Dolls

by Hewson, David

  ‘Because I told you to.’

  ‘Don’t push it.’

  Her fingers squeezed, tweaked him.

  ‘Ow.’

  ‘A little pain helps sometimes.’

  He took her hand away.

  ‘You never stop, do you?’ he said.

  She bent down, sniffed his hand, put his right index finger in her mouth, sucked on it, burst out laughing, threw back her head.

  ‘One life, Wim. That’s all we get.’ She was watching him. ‘You still screw her, don’t you?’

  Prins looked around for his clothes. He’d need a shower. There was another meeting, a liaison group, before he could go home.

  ‘You didn’t answer . . .’

  ‘Liesbeth was hurt. I thought maybe I could save her. I couldn’t do that for Bea. Or Katja.’

  There’d been no call from Marnixstraat. Or home.

  ‘If you still love her why do you keep begging to come round here?’

  He didn’t like being questioned. Pushed into a corner.

  Prins put his hand to her neck, kissed her quickly on the lips.

  ‘Six months. When we’ve got De Nachtwacht running. If we come out with this now they’ll call us hypocrites.’

  She glanced at the bed.

  ‘Wait . . .’ Finger to her lips, thinking. ‘I get it. Bea and the girl failed you. So you ditch them and find yourself a new wife. A new work in progress. And when she’s gone?’

  ‘Six months,’ he repeated. ‘We need to be careful. I’m going to have to deal with this Katja thing too.’

  ‘Sometimes I wonder about you. I mean . . . I know I can be a bitch. But . . . You really don’t give a shit about that kid, do you?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘If you’d been through what I have . . . Forget it. I’m taking a shower.’

  He tried to close the bathroom door. She forced her way through, sat on the toilet watching him. Prins scowled, turned on the water and pointed to the door.

  ‘Can I have some privacy now?’ he asked.

  ‘God you’re a prude. The worst sort. The filthy kind.’

  Margriet Willemsen went back into the bedroom, listened to the shower coming to life.

  Looked round. Shelf upon shelf of books. Some going back to college, in Holland, at Harvard when she was working on her MBA.

  An organized woman. A touch obsessive. Everything was supposed to be in its place. History books one shelf. Economics next. Then politics. Then art.

  A photo collection of Man Ray had worked its way into the travel section. This was wrong. Then she looked again. Someone had been messing with the books in this room. And it wasn’t Wim Prins, a man she’d never seen read a thing except council papers.

  Slowly, methodically, she worked her way down every row, tidying up, wondering how this happened.

  Two shelves down on the wall at the foot of the bed she found something that didn’t belong at all. A thick paperback. The name on the spine was that of a writer she didn’t know. The title was just as foreign too.

  She removed the book from the business titles around it, felt the weight in her hand. Looked at the small circle of glass at the top of the spine. Opened the pages and saw the tiny video camera inside, taped to a mobile phone hooked up to what looked like a series of batteries that filled the rest of the space.

  Big enough to have been working for a week. Maybe longer.

  She thought about the men who’d visited recently.

  Prins came out of the bathroom, towel round his waist, dripping water onto the carpet, looked at her.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Margriet Willemsen said, pushing the fake book back onto the shelf, spine to the wall. ‘You can go now. I’ll see you in the morning.’

  19

  A business card. A drawing of a miniature mansion.

  Poppenhuis aan de Prinsengracht.

  The Doll’s House on the Prinsengracht. Except this was nothing like the place he’d expected.

  Another of Jimmy Menzo’s lies. Blue kid hid behind a couple of cars and watched the door. The house looked derelict, abandoned, a dump. Nothing in the windows except tape holding together broken glass.

  He didn’t know why he’d bothered. Except . . . where else?

  Thirty-five euros in his pocket. A fake ID. Nothing more. The money in the briefcase wasn’t coming their way. Maybe never was.

  Back home in Surinamese there were hideaways for times like this. Family and acquaintances. Gang members who’d help for a price. But Amsterdam was a world away and full of strangers.

  Except for one.

  As he looked up the narrow street he saw the kid coming. Red shiny suit, thin face veering between fear and aggression. Sweaty. Scared.

  He should have asked his name.

  Red kid was fast too. Before he could move the idiot had got to the derelict house, tried the door.

  No, blue kid thought. Don’t . . .

  By then he was watching him walk in.

  He didn’t know why he followed, running, yelling.

  A name would have helped.

  The door opened into a front room full of old-fashioned furniture covered in dust and cobwebs. A vast curved sofa. Paintings on the walls.

  Couples in old-fashioned dress, men and women out for walks. And the colour of the place. Pink like a nursery. Pink wallpaper, pink carpet, pink furniture.

  Red kid was walking towards the back, calling out for Miriam Smith.

  Blue kid followed, a part of him fascinated. He was looking at the dusty remains of a world he’d only heard about. Rich once. Warm and sensuous. The kind of place he’d end up one day.

  There were small rooms on both sides, each with a double bed and everything pink, down to the silly lampshades.

  Paintings on all the walls. Young women in costumes. Like dolls. So maybe the name wasn’t a lie after all.

  Ahead of him red kid was flicking dead light switches and yelling, ‘Hey! Anyone at home?’

  Blue kid strode through the darkness, took hold of the red jacket, got a fierce look back.

  ‘They’re not here,’ he said. ‘We screwed up. It’s not safe. And . . .’

  They were never coming, he thought. Whatever had happened outside the courthouse.

  The place stank of gas. He could hear it hissing from somewhere close by.

  ‘Need to get out of here, man,’ he whispered.

  ‘I want my money! I want my stinking money!’

  ‘We didn’t kill him. We didn’t do anything they asked.’

  The gas was so bad it made him want to gag. How many reasons could there be?

  Only one he could think of and it made his blood run cold.

  ‘Outside,’ he said, dragging red kid back towards the open door by the collar of his cheap jacket.

  ‘Where we going?’

  Straight to hell, blue kid thought. One way or another. And without a name.

  The explosion hit just as he got close enough to the door to feel a squally burst of Amsterdam rain on his teenage face. By then red kid had fought free and tried to get back into the place that once called itself Poppenhuis aan de Prinsengracht.

  The idiot was yelling for Miriam Smith, screaming idle threats and curses from distant Paramaribo she’d never understand.

  Fire and debris and dust consumed them both. When he came to they were on the front patio along with the remains of an ancient sofa and stacks of rubbish and shattered glass. There was blood on the red jacket and the kid’s right arm was hanging loose from the socket, shattered at the elbow.

  Blue kid choked and gagged on the cloud of grime falling around them then felt himself: nothing broken.

  There was a gun by the other one’s feet. The Walther that Menzo had given him that morning. Must have kept it tucked into his jacket after he dumped the semi-automatic.

  ‘We’re going,’ blue kid said and yanked him by the good arm into the street.

  Sirens getting nearer. People staring at them, more bem
used than scared. Things like this weren’t supposed to happen in this nice and civilized city. Two kids from Surinamese had brought it here. With a little help on the side.

  ‘To Africa?’ red kid asked, clutching at his bleeding arm.

  He dragged him down to the next street. Stopped the first cab, a silver Mercedes. Poked the gun into the driver’s face just like a carjack back home. Made the fat old man get out and put red kid in the passenger seat before he climbed behind the wheel.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said as he spun the cab round, trying to work out what direction might take them out of the city. ‘Africa. Where else?’

  20

  They put Theo Jansen back in a holding cell. Twenty minutes after De Groot turned up news came in of an explosion a kilometre away in an abandoned house. His mood was deteriorating by the second.

  ‘Jimmy Menzo flew his plane down to Ostend at ten this morning,’ the commissaris said. ‘With his girlfriend.’

  ‘The Belgians can pick them up for us,’ Bakker suggested.

  Vos shook his head.

  ‘For what? We don’t have anything to hold them. Jimmy will be back. To gloat. There won’t be any obvious connections. There never is. The kid I saw outside—’

  ‘Two of them,’ De Groot cut in. ‘Came in a boat. One of them turned tail when he saw it was going wrong.’

  ‘We need to get hold of them, Frank. Jimmy will have plans—’

  ‘Yes! I know!’

  It wasn’t like De Groot to get flustered.

  ‘Is the explosion connected?’ Vos asked.

  De Groot didn’t think so. The fire people said the place was derelict. They thought it was down to a gas leak.

  It seemed a miracle the kid who’d been loosing off with a semi-automatic outside the Prinsengracht courthouse hadn’t hurt anyone. A few broken windows and some damage to the masonry was all they had.

  ‘Have you heard any more about Katja Prins?’ Vos asked.

  ‘Nothing,’ De Groot said. ‘Her father still thinks this is all a game. Maybe he’s right. He knows her better than we do. I’ve got to go back to Marnixstraat. You deal with things here.’

  They walked downstairs, went to the holding cell. Bakker followed. Theo Jansen sat on a bench seat. Vos asked him again where Zeeger might be.

  The big hood threw up his hands and shrieked.

  ‘I told you! I don’t know. Ask Lindeman—’

  ‘I did,’ Bakker cut in. ‘He says he hasn’t a clue. The last address he had . . . Zeeger’s vanished.’

  ‘Jaap doesn’t belong to me,’ Jansen answered. ‘End of story. I want to go home.’

  ‘Katja Prins lived at that same address, Theo,’ Vos said. ‘She introduced Zeeger to the place. Now she’s missing. Looks like my daughter’s case. Same kind of routine.’

  Jansen shuffled on the seat then screwed up his eyes and said, ‘What?’

  ‘We’ve got a doll with her blood, her hair. Just like I had.’

  ‘This is nothing to do with me,’ Jansen insisted. ‘How could it be? I’ve been in jail for the last two years. I want to go home. The judge said I could.’

  ‘It’s a conditional release,’ Vos told him. ‘We can revoke it any time we like without a reason. I talked to the judge. It’s done.’

  ‘To hell with this shit . . .’

  ‘No,’ Vos insisted, rising to his feet. ‘You’re not going anywhere. There’ll be a van to take you back to prison in an hour. It’s going to have to be solitary I’m afraid. Maximum security. For your own safety . . .’

  Jansen got to his feet roaring, fists flailing. Bakker retreated. Pieter Vos stood still and stared into Jansen’s furious face. Waiting for the storm to abate.

  ‘Tomorrow you can talk to Michiel Lindeman about your legal options,’ he added. ‘Not today. Whoever wants you dead placed someone in the courthouse. We don’t know who. It was a fake ID. If they can do that maybe they can reach you in jail. I’d rather keep you out of the way.’

  With that he turned and went back upstairs. Bakker followed, clucking complaints. At the top he waited for her.

  ‘Vos! You didn’t talk to any judge. You haven’t booked a van to take him back to jail. You haven’t—’

  ‘Have a word with Frank. He can fix it.’

  He looked at his watch.

  ‘I need a beer. I need to see Sam’s eating properly. He’s picky about his food.’

  ‘There’s work . . .’

  He smiled and that shut her up.

  ‘Not for me there isn’t. I said I’d look at some papers. That’s all. I’m not part of Marnixstraat any more. This is down to you.’

  Then he walked out of the Prinsengracht courthouse, took a good look at the broken windows and the bullet marks on the facade, picked up his old bike and set off home.

  21

  Red kid hung on to his shattered arm screaming. Blue kid hugged the wheel as the city turned round and round.

  Sirens. Dead-end streets. People on foot leaping out of the way. People on bikes shaking their fists.

  This was a strange bad place to be and he’d no idea how they could escape, where they could go.

  He turned the Mercedes down a narrow alley, praying for some time to think.

  There was always the police. Though he knew what the price for that would be. Someone would pay, even if it wasn’t him.

  ‘Shit,’ he said and slammed his hand on the wheel as he brought the car to a screaming halt.

  A dead end. Nothing but pavement, the inevitable cycle track, and beyond it still, slow water.

  ‘We didn’t kill no one,’ red kid said, squeezing his bloodied, shattered arm.

  ‘I noticed. So will Menzo.’

  The building on the right looked like a warehouse. On the left an abandoned apartment block. He’d no idea what part of the city he’d taken them to.

  ‘We didn’t kill no one,’ red kid said again and then the old Nokia rang.

  He knew who it would be.

  ‘Are you the one with the sister?’ Jimmy Menzo asked.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said without thinking.

  ‘She wants to talk to you.’

  Clicking sounds as if they were patching her through from somewhere different. He held the phone away from his ear knowing what was coming next.

  One year younger. Pretty as sin. She’d probably be whoring anyway, not running a coffee shop or bar. He understood that. Appreciated where they stood in the world.

  ‘Stop,’ he said when he couldn’t take her screams any more.

  It went on for another minute or more. Red kid was quiet. Didn’t even moan about his arm.

  ‘I said cut it out!’

  Menzo came back on the line and said, ‘It’s up to you, kid. You know what to do.’

  He sounded so calm he might have been ordering pizza.

  ‘Say you won’t hurt her.’

  Stupid words. Pointless.

  ‘I won’t hurt her. There.’

  Blue kid opened the window and threw the phone out onto the grubby pavement.

  Red kid watched him then asked, ‘Where are we going if we don’t go to Africa?’

  ‘What’s your name?’

  A moment’s pause then, ‘Etienne.’

  Blue kid wiped his nose with his sleeve and said, ‘Forgive me Etienne.’

  Then picked up the gun that lay between them, shot him once through the head the way he’d learned on the hard streets back home.

  The canal was watching him. Listening. Waiting.

  The Mercedes couldn’t have been more than six months old. Clean and shiny. Nice black leather. Still had that new smell. He’d have ripped off something like this back home. Jacked it in a flash. Maybe in Cape Town he could have bought one for himself.

  Manual though. What an American hood he knew called a stick shift. Not automatic like this.

  Blue kid wound his arms around the steering wheel as if he was hugging it. Then he slammed his right foot onto the accelerator and clung on as the silver Mercedes burst a
cross the blocked end of the road, over the cycle track, through the low brick wall at the end, and roared down towards the leaden, opaque water below.

  22

  Wim Prins didn’t get home till just after eight. Liesbeth was in the living room clutching a glass of Scotch. The TV was on. Too loud.

  He sat down and watched the evening news. An extended edition. Talk of gangster wars, violence on the streets of Amsterdam.

  ‘Mulder called from Marnixstraat,’ she said without looking at him. ‘He wanted to know if anyone tried to contact you about Katja.’

  ‘Of course they haven’t. I’d have told him. She’ll probably call me tomorrow and say it was all a bad joke. Then ask for something.’

  She got up and poured herself another drink.

  ‘Go easy on that,’ he said.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You need me to say?’ He watched her top up the glass at that, glaring at him. ‘Very smart.’

  ‘Smarter than coke and smack, isn’t it? Did Bea get lectures too?’

  ‘Yes. And Katja. They didn’t work either. But . . .’ He got up and poured himself a modest glass. ‘I tried.’ He raised the whisky. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘What are we going to do?’

  ‘I told you. We wait. She always comes round in the end.’

  The TV was so loud. The journalist was saying the gang war might be a response to the council’s planned crackdown. That De Nachtwacht brought on this battle between the mobs. He even named Jansen and Menzo as the primary culprits.

  Prins came close to his wife, took the drink away, held her hands, tried to look into her damp and troubled eyes. She could have been Bea at that moment and this thought terrified him.

  ‘When I’ve got everything set with the council we’ll take a break. Go to Aruba. Stay there for a little while if you like. Get some work done on the place. I’m sorry. I’m a bit . . . distracted right now.’

  She reached up, kissed him briefly on the cheek and said, ‘You need a shower. You stink from being in that suit all day.’

  He took off his jacket, put it round the back of the nearest chair.

  ‘Why would Katja do this?’ she asked. ‘To you? To me? What did we do to deserve it?’