The House of Dolls

by Hewson, David

  Jaap Zeeger was still missing. There was no news about Katja Prins. The papers and the TV were full of stories about gang war and the attempt on Jansen’s life. None had yet picked up the identity of the murder victim in the Prinsengracht or the fact the Prins girl was missing.

  Bakker’s phone rang. She mouthed the word ‘forensic’ and listened to the call, her pale face taut with interest.

  ‘Why are they calling you?’ De Groot asked when she was done.

  ‘Because I asked them to,’ she said as if the answer was obvious. ‘They found something on the doll. The one he left with Rosie Jansen. There was a . . .’

  She went to the laptop, scanned her messages.

  ‘A little camera. Taped to the back inside a plastic bag to keep out the water.’

  Fingers on the laptop again. Her hand went to her face and stroked back a stray strand of hair.

  ‘It’s got pictures. And a video. They’re sending it over.’

  The three of them waited. A series of images came up. Vos watched very carefully.

  ‘Where is that?’ he asked.

  ‘Rosie Jansen’s apartment,’ De Groot said. ‘We knew she was killed there anyway.’

  Eight still images in all. Theo Jansen’s daughter dead on the floor of what looked like an elegant room. Pale carpet. Modern paintings on the wall. Blood alongside it. Spatter. A single shot.

  Scattered furniture. Broken crockery. Glass fragments on the carpet.

  ‘She fought,’ Bakker said.

  ‘Like a tiger,’ Vos agreed. ‘Rosie would.’

  ‘Is there anything new?’ De Groot asked with a marked impatience. ‘How did he get in? What have forensic got?’

  ‘No sign of forced entry,’ she said then tapped the keyboard once more. ‘Nothing else. They’re still looking. It takes time I guess.’

  Vos stared at his feet. Brown suede shoes. Worse for wear. On the way out he’d picked a few clean clothes out of the laundry bag Sofia had waiting for him. Different socks. Still odd, light grey and dark. He’d never noticed. Same navy wool jumper. Beneath it a cheap sweatshirt from C&A. He was dressed for a night listening to a band in the Melkweg. Not a murder investigation.

  ‘You don’t have time,’ he said. ‘Someone’s pushing here. Pushing Theo Jansen.’ He stared at De Groot. ‘Pushing you. Maybe even pushing Jimmy Menzo.’

  The commissaris said something about going back to Marnixstraat and talking the case through there.

  Vos shook his head.

  ‘Yesterday was a favour. I’ve paid off your stinking cheese now.’

  ‘Jesus, Pieter!’ De Groot cried. ‘This bastard dumped Rosie Jansen on your doorstep. He came inside your home. You’re involved whether you like it or not.’

  ‘All the more reason to be out of it,’ Vos replied and got up, looked at the pallid day outside.

  He could go back to the Drie Vaten. Sleep for a while. They’d release his boat once the forensic people were through. After that he’d tidy up. Change into different old, threadbare clothes. Get back to the work that wasn’t really work. The life that didn’t add up to much at all.

  Maybe sit in the Rijksmuseum again, hour after hour, staring at Petronella Oortman’s doll’s house, trying to make sense of things.

  After that drink a few beers. Maybe smoke something for the first time in weeks.

  Wasting time. Because what else was left to do with it?

  ‘Forensic sent over a video,’ Bakker added. ‘It was on the camera too. Wasn’t taken with the other photos. Someone put it in there deliberately.’

  ‘How many pictures do you need?’ Vos asked, exasperated. ‘Rosie Jansen’s dead. Start looking.’

  ‘It’s not about her,’ Bakker said warily.

  Then she pulled up something new on the screen.

  2

  Wim Prins sat in the kitchen of their quiet courtyard home. Just after eight. Coffee and toast on the table. Klaas Mulder, the hoofdinspecteur from Marnixstraat, had turned up ten minutes early.

  To Prins’s annoyance he didn’t want to talk about De Nachtwacht. Just Katja.

  ‘If this isn’t some kind of game—’ he began.

  ‘It’s not a game,’ Liesbeth spat at him. ‘Whatever it is, it’s not that.’

  Mulder glared at her. She scrubbed at the kitchen table with a dishcloth, not that it needed it.

  ‘If Katja’s been taken you’ve got to expect an approach. Probably today,’ Mulder said. ‘It’s possible this is linked to the attack on Jansen.’

  ‘How’s that?’ Prins asked.

  Mulder shrugged. Picked up his coffee, toyed with a doughnut on the table and said, ‘You promised to take them apart. Maybe Menzo thinks this is a good time to throw Jansen and his people out for good. You won’t get rid of everything. What’s left . . . he gets more.’

  ‘This is about Katja,’ Liesbeth whispered. ‘Not politics. Not some stupid law . . .’

  Silence. Mulder filled up his own coffee cup. Waited.

  ‘It’s about my daughter,’ Prins agreed. ‘She’s screwing me around again. I don’t doubt it. Not the first time. Won’t be the last. But we’ve got to deal with it.’

  The cop shrugged.

  ‘Either way it’s serious. De Groot says he’s not turning a blind eye any more. If this is all a game she’s in court for wasting our time. If someone has her. Menzo say . . .’

  Liesbeth Prins put a shaking hand to her forehead.

  ‘Jesus, Wim. Why did you get us into all this shit? What possible point—?’

  ‘Stop it!’ Prins yelled. ‘You know why.’ He nodded at Mulder.

  ‘He does too. The whole damned city. God knows it’s been played out in the papers often enough. I had a wife who fell to pieces in front of my eyes. Got a daughter who’s gone the same way. It’s just—’

  ‘So it’s about you, is it?’ she asked in a low and bitter tone.

  ‘If you like,’ he said more quietly. Then to Mulder, ‘Tell me what you want us to do.’

  ‘We need a list of all her friends. Her contacts—’

  ‘Katja left home two years ago,’ Prins cut in. ‘You know them better than we do.’

  Mulder put his notebook back in his jacket, ate some more doughnut, looked at his watch and said, ‘If you’re too busy . . .’

  ‘She’s still got her room here,’ Liesbeth said. ‘There are things in it. Some of it goes back to when she was little.’ A pause. ‘She was happy then.’

  ‘You’ve looked?’ the cop asked.

  ‘Not much. I wondered whether we could throw some of it out. But whenever I asked she flew off the handle.’ Liesbeth Prins hugged herself through the thin dressing gown. ‘Even after she left. It’s not easy.’

  ‘What isn’t?’

  ‘Being a stepmother. Or a stepdaughter I guess. Do you want to see?’

  He finished eating, shook his head.

  ‘Not really.’ Mulder got up, brushed the crumbs from his jacket. ‘If someone calls let me know.’

  ‘We didn’t talk about De Nachtwacht,’ Prins said.

  ‘We didn’t. Bit busy right now to be honest. With things that matter.’ The grin. ‘Missing people. Dead people.’

  ‘This is going to happen, Mulder. Marnixstraat won’t stop it.’

  ‘No,’ he agreed. ‘We won’t. But from what I hear we won’t need to.’

  ‘What?’

  Mulder got up, threw his business card at Liesbeth Prins.

  ‘If you hear anything come straight to me. No one else.’

  3

  Laura Bakker ran the video sent by Marnixstraat forensic. Shaky frame rate. Bright summer’s day from another time.

  It was on the memory card but came from a different camera. The date was a little under three years before. Just days before Anneliese disappeared.

  ‘That’s your daughter, isn’t it?’ she asked.

  Frank de Groot had his face in his hands, was cursing.

  It took a while for Vos to say yes.

  He tr
ied to place the location. Grass. Families with kids. A pale building like a flying saucer in the background.

  The Vondelpark. The Blue Teahouse. A quiet place for a drink or a sandwich. They used to wheel Anneliese there in a pushchair when she was tiny and the world seemed whole.

  Here she was looking the way she did just before she vanished. Young and beautiful and happy. On the cusp of adulthood, a life beyond home. She was treading barefoot across the grass, laughing and smiling for whoever held the camera. Vos could remember watching her do that. It could have been yesterday. He recalled too the way he used to worry. What if something – a wasp, a piece of broken glass – lurked in the Vondelpark’s lush lawn and he failed to see it first?

  ‘That’s Anneliese?’ Bakker asked again.

  Dancing on the green grass as if she’d live forever.

  Laura Bakker didn’t seem to mind she got no answer. Just went on anyway.

  ‘One of the night team saw this, Vos. They recognized her. I’m sorry. They said it was important.’

  ‘Of course it’s important,’ Vos said, eyes locked to the small video window. ‘Someone wants me in this case. What else did they tell you?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  He reached forward and paused the video.

  She’d gone missing the third week of July. It was hot that summer. No rain. The city had felt lethargic. Vos had been slaving day and night trying to persuade some low-level hoods in the city gangs to turn informer. No sign of the storm to come.

  He leaned forward and looked very closely at the grass, the people around her. She was wearing a pastel blue shirt and jeans cut off below the knee. He could remember being with her when they went shopping for them. A birthday present. He got bored when she took so long to make up her mind.

  Liesbeth couldn’t come for a reason he couldn’t recall.

  He shook his head, tried to clear his thoughts. Hit play again.

  ‘Vos . . .’ Bakker began.

  Anneliese was heading towards the Blue Teahouse. Skipping like the kid she was. Then she sat on the grass, hands around her knees, face full of delight. Of . . .

  Happiness. And she wasn’t always. He recognized that now.

  The picture shook. Whoever held the camera was trying to sit down too, still holding the thing.

  Vos moved in so close his nose almost touched the screen. Watched as a figure came into view. Same kind of clothes. A pale shirt, pink this time. Long blue jeans.

  Then a face.

  Blonde hair. Bright blue eyes. They might have been sisters.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ De Groot murmured. ‘What the . . .?’

  Bakker reached over, hit pause and scrabbled for some stock shots from the files.

  ‘That’s the Prins girl, isn’t it?’

  Vos kept staring at the screen: two young fair-haired girls in their mid-teens. They might have been cousins. Sisters. He hadn’t been at home much but he knew a few of Anneliese’s friends. Katja Prins had never been among them.

  ‘Katja doesn’t look like that now,’ she said.

  Three photos. Police mugshots probably. A surly, drawn face, that of a teenager old before her time. Vos turned them over, looked at the dates. They started two years before.

  ‘So the girls knew each other?’ De Groot asked.

  ‘Not that I was aware,’ Vos said. ‘I was working, remember? God knows how many hours a day . . .’

  Marnixstraat swallowed him up the moment he walked through those doors. Liesbeth seemed content. Anneliese was growing, busy in the summer holidays. There was nothing for a father to worry about.

  De Groot ran a finger over more papers.

  ‘Katja Prins went to pieces after Anneliese vanished. First mention of being taken into police custody three months later. Drunk. High. Prins pulled some strings and got her off with a caution.’

  Vos reached forward and hit play. Forty seconds of Anneliese and Katja Prins beaming at the camera like childhood friends, caught in a hot and sunny summer that would never end.

  Then the screen went black. He was about to turn it off when Bakker pointed out the video wasn’t done. Another twenty seconds to run. They waited.

  After a brief gap a light came on. A dark, squalid room. A terrified, bloodless face.

  Katja Prins again. Features drawn. Thinner. Made miserable by something Pieter Vos couldn’t begin to guess.

  Screaming, mouth wide open, spittle flying.

  Vader, Vader, Vader. Help me . . .

  No one else in the picture. Nothing behind except blackness and plain pale walls.

  ‘Someone’s holding that camera,’ De Groot said. ‘Someone’s got that kid.’

  The three of them sat for a long minute not saying a word. Pieter Vos closed his eyes and tried to think. Sometimes you made decisions. Sometimes life made them for you.

  He turned and looked at Laura Bakker.

  ‘Where were you last night?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘When I came back and saw someone had been in my boat. I thought it was you. I tried to call. You were on voicemail.’

  She didn’t blink.

  ‘I was so pissed off with you I didn’t answer. I thought you were drunk.’

  ‘If you’re going to work with me you pick up the phone.’

  She shook her head.

  ‘I’m working with you?’

  Then to De Groot.

  ‘I want Koeman, Rijnder and Van der Berg. They can start by getting all the files on Katja Prins. On Menzo and Jansen.’ He thought for a moment. ‘After which they’re mine, along with Bakker here.’

  ‘We’re really stretched, Pieter . . .’ De Groot said.

  ‘Don’t care. Mulder can work on Rosie Jansen. I don’t want him sticking his nose in this.’

  A nod, the softest of grunts.

  Vos got up.

  ‘Where are you going?’

  De Groot asked.

  ‘I’ve got a call to make.’ Then to Bakker. ‘Go back to Marnixstraat. Arrange for Jansen to be transferred there.’

  They looked at him.

  ‘You need an ID for the daughter, don’t you?’ Vos asked.

  ‘Of course,’ De Groot agreed.

  Vos pointed a finger at both of them.

  ‘No one tells Theo Jansen a thing. You leave that to me.’

  ‘Then what?’ De Groot said.

  ‘Then we put him back in jail. You wouldn’t want him on the street, Frank. Not after he’s heard.’

  4

  Close to the end of another meeting about De Nachtwacht. Hendriks and Margriet Willemsen around the table.

  ‘We had a call from one of the papers,’ Hendriks said. ‘The reporter didn’t want to say why. She says she needs to talk to you. A personal matter.’

  Prins slammed his pen on the table and swore.

  ‘I told her that wasn’t good enough,’ Hendriks added.

  Margriet Willemsen’s eyes had scarcely risen from the documents for a moment since they began.

  ‘It’s about your daughter,’ the civil servant added. ‘They’ve heard she’s missing again.’

  She was looking at him then.

  ‘What’s wrong, Wim?’ she asked. ‘Is there news?’

  He’d got used to the idea that everything changed when he entered the council offices. That he shrugged off the world outside, became someone else. But it wasn’t true. All the crap followed him, up the stairs, into the office that overlooked the canal and De Wallen.

  ‘I thought it was Katja jerking me around again,’ Prins said. ‘Maybe I was wrong. It’s possible this is something to do with what happened yesterday. The attack on Theo Jansen.’

  ‘How?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t know! If the police do they’re not saying.’

  She said nothing.

  ‘I won’t be blackmailed,’ Prins said. ‘I won’t let these bastards win.’

  ‘Best we don’t complicate things,’ she said.

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘
We can stall on De Nachtwacht,’ Hendriks suggested. ‘You should focus on your daughter. It doesn’t look good if you carry on as normal. As if it didn’t matter.’

  Prins slammed his fist on the table.

  ‘We don’t back down. I won’t—’

  ‘Listen to me.’ She reached out and placed her hand on his. ‘You’re upset. It’s understandable. Alex is right. Let’s put out a statement. Say we want to make sure everyone’s on board—’

  ‘Dammit!’ Prins yelled. ‘I run this place. I say what happens here. We’ve got a timetable.’ He picked up the project plan, launched it across the table at Hendriks. ‘We stick to it.’

  They stayed silent.

  ‘Any questions?’

  ‘If that’s what you want,’ she said quietly. ‘We should ask Marnixstraat to put a blackout on any stories about Katja. They’ll do that for us, Alex?’

  Hendriks was frowning. He never liked raised voices.

  ‘If it’s a kidnapping I guess so,’ he said.

  Then he took his phones and his iPad and fled.

  ‘You shouldn’t lose your temper with staff,’ Willemsen said when he’d left. ‘It can come back to haunt you.’

  ‘Come back to haunt me?’ Prins said. Then told her about the email and the video.

  She didn’t blink, just listened then asked, ‘Have you still got it?’

  ‘Do I look like a moron? If Liesbeth saw—’

  ‘What did he say? What did he ask for?’

  Prins tried to remember.

  ‘He didn’t ask for anything. There was a name. Pop Meester. The file. That was all. For Christ’s sake. How the hell did they get something like that?’

  She got up, walked to the window. Dark pin-striped business suit. Not a black hair out of place.

  ‘How?’ Prins asked again. He couldn’t look her in the eye. ‘I mean . . . without you knowing?’

  ‘What?’

  She came to him, put her palms on the table, looked in his face. Margriet Willemsen never got mad. Just cold and right then she was icier than he’d ever seen.

  ‘Are you asking me whether I filmed us screwing? Then passed it on to some . . . blackmailer?’