‘I didn’t—’
‘Why would I do that? What possible reason . . .?’
‘If the press get hold of this. If Liesbeth—’
‘Don’t be so damned weak.’
‘How did this happen?’ he asked again. ‘They had something in your room.’
Her hand went to his grey hair. Affection. Or control. He wasn’t sure.
‘I’ll deal with that. I’ll deal with De Nachtwacht. It can wait for now.’
‘No. That’s what these bastards want, isn’t it?’
The desk phone rang. He hesitated to pick it up. So she did it for him.
Alex Hendriks. Marnixstraat were going to get onto the press. There’d be a blackout agreed on Katja. No mention of her in the papers or the broadcast media. No one to approach the family.
‘Someone’s really taken her, haven’t they?’ Prins whispered.
Willemsen sat on the edge of the desk.
‘It might be best if you went home.’
‘And do what exactly?’
‘Be with your wife?’ she suggested. ‘That would look good.’
5
Vos was at the Prins house, an awkward meeting punctuated by difficult silences.
‘Is there anything I should know?’ he asked.
‘Like what?’
Liesbeth looked terrible. As if she hadn’t slept in days. Almost as bad as she did after their daughter went missing.
‘Anneliese and Katja Prins were friends,’ he said. ‘I’d no idea. Did you?’
They sat at the kitchen table in the comfortable, elegant house hidden away in a select courtyard near Willemstraat. It was nothing like the life they’d lived together. He was working long hours rising through the ranks in Marnixstraat while she brought up Anneliese, taking temporary jobs on the side. They never ran short. Never made much of a fuss about furniture or decorations. All those things seemed irrelevant. They were a family and while Vos wished she’d agree to marry him he understood and accepted why she didn’t. What was the point? They had Anneliese, a beautiful child, more precious, more significant than any band of gold could ever be.
‘That can’t be right,’ she said too quickly. ‘I’d have known.’
For a while she’d worked in a legal aid organization. Lawyers came and went.
‘Did Wim used to come into your office when you were in Damrak? Maybe he brought Katja with him?’
She went to the sink, got a pack of cigarettes, came back and lit one. Her hand shook the way it used to.
‘What is this, Pieter?’
He told her about Rosie Jansen’s murder, how she was found next to his boat.
‘It looks like you’re not the only one who wants me involved in this case.’ He showed her the police ID. ‘I’m back and I never wanted to be. We found a video. Anneliese and Katja in the Vondelpark. They were friends. Not long before she disappeared. No question.’
She thought about it.
‘Maybe Wim did bring her. I don’t remember. I never really knew Katja until I started seeing him. Liese was dead then. We were history.’
Not dead, he thought. Just missing.
‘Teenagers like secrets,’ Vos said. ‘They cultivate them.’
‘You were out day and night when she disappeared. I’d left the law office by then anyway. That summer I had a part-time job. I still took her to school. Brought her home. She never saw Katja as far as I know. Are you really sure?’
‘I saw the pictures.’
‘Well . . .’ A shrug. ‘I can’t explain it.’
He waited.
‘Why are you here anyway? Mulder was round first thing. We told him everything we knew. When someone calls we’ll tell you.’
‘If,’ he said. ‘If they call.’
‘So you think Katja’s playing tricks again? With all this gang shit going on? Mulder said maybe they took her.’
‘Maybe they did.’
‘Well?’
‘I don’t know. I’m just asking questions. Waiting for answers. It’s all I do.’
He watched her cough on the cigarette, took it from her fingers, stubbed it out in the ashtray.
‘You’re not my keeper now,’ she said.
‘I never was, was I? How could I have been? I wasn’t there. The job . . .’ That was true and he regretted it. ‘Sorry.’
Liesbeth always liked apologies. They were a sign she’d won.
‘She’s still got things here. Her old bedroom. I told Mulder. I thought he might be interested.’
‘He wasn’t?’
‘Him and Wim are at loggerheads over this Nachtwacht nonsense. None of you want that to happen, do you?’
Vos sighed.
‘I’ve been a police officer for all of sixty minutes. Don’t ask me to speak on behalf of Marnixstraat. I’d like to see her room if that’s OK.’
It was at the front, overlooking the private park in the centre of the courtyard. Small, with a single bed and a studied tidiness that surely came from Liesbeth’s fastidious hands, not those of a teenager.
Lurid posters of pop stars on the wall. A wardrobe stuffed full of clothes. A chest of drawers much the same. A desk with the ghostly marks of a missing laptop on the surface.
‘The computer . . .’
‘Wim said she sold it for dope.’
He rifled through the clothes in the wardrobe. Bags of shoes at the back. Lots.
‘She left plenty behind.’
‘Fashion, Pieter. There’s no value in anything from yesterday.’ She looked him up and down, briefly put a hand to his threadbare jumper. ‘You never did understand that. You don’t look a day older. How do you manage that?’
‘Maybe because I haven’t done anything of late,’ he said with a shrug.
Liesbeth sat down on the bed and looked ready to weep.
He went through the chest. Just underwear, socks, shirts, a few books: vampires and steampunk.
‘Do you hate me?’ she asked.
The desk had a single drawer. It was full of pens, spent concert tickets, paper clips and crayons. There was a large art pad at the back. He took it out and flicked through some of the drawings there.
‘Why would I hate you?’
‘Because I ran out when you needed me.’
Vos came and sat down on the bed.
‘We were both too broken by what happened. We couldn’t talk. There was nothing left.’
They’d never had this conversation and that was a cruel and sad omission.
‘You didn’t need me,’ he added. ‘Not that I could see.’
‘I . . .’
She closed her eyes, said no more.
‘When Wim came along he seemed to take you out of yourself. Out of the misery.’ He gestured at the room. ‘Took you to a place like this . . .’
Vos laughed and felt no jealousy, no envy. Even the regret seemed to be fading.
‘No competition really. Is there?’
She reached out and squeezed his hand. Didn’t let go. Looked as if she wanted to say something but didn’t dare.
Vos kept looking at the desk.
‘Katja and Anneliese knew each other,’ he said. ‘They were close. Not long before she vanished. Back then . . .’
He couldn’t get those images out of his head. The two girls, beautiful and carefree in the park. Was it possible a friendship that seemed so close could be a secret?
‘Back then Katja was fine too.’ He slipped his hand out of hers. ‘When did she start to lose it?’
‘I don’t know. Ask Wim. He’s her father.’
‘I will.’
‘Marrying me didn’t help. I was never good enough. Bea was larger than life. Knew everyone. Did what the hell she liked. And then the dope got to her. And she killed herself. Katja’s still a simple child really. She loves a little drama. How the hell could I compete with that?’
When he was an officer in Marnixstraat his head worked well. Had a capacity for dates and linear narratives. Now . . .
‘When
did Bea die?’ he asked. ‘I don’t remember.’
‘That’s because you were stinking drunk and doped up too,’ she said with a sudden flash of anger. ‘It was around the time we split up.’
‘How exactly?’ he asked.
She glared at him.
‘She shot herself. Were you really so out of it you never knew?’
He went and looked at the desk again. Something was stuck underneath one of the corners by the wall. Vos crawled onto the carpet and found it: a USB memory stick.
Smiling, he held it up.
‘Mulder’s a cretin,’ she said.
‘You’ve got a computer? I’d like to take a look.’
She showed him into the study. Prins’s desktop was sleeping.
He brought it to life, put the stick into the machine.
‘Could you check her bedroom again?’ he asked. ‘See if there’s anything I missed?’
A dark look but she left anyway.
There was a single message in Wim Prins’s inbox, sent just a few minutes before. It came from someone calling himself Pop Meester.
An interesting name in the circumstances. Vos thought for a moment, opened the message. There was a zip file with it. Room on the USB stick, just time to get it on there before Liesbeth came back empty-handed. Then he thought for a second and marked the message unread.
‘Well?’ she asked.
He clicked on the first of Katja’s files. Pop music came out of the desktop speakers. Everything on there was an MP3.
‘Piracy’s bad,’ he said, and ejected the USB stick. ‘I’d like to keep this anyway.’
‘I can make some more coffee,’ she said, suddenly hopeful.
‘I’ve got an appointment.’
‘You always have. Another time?’
He pocketed the memory stick and said goodbye.
6
The morgue was on the ground floor at the back of Marnixstraat overlooking the staff car park and the adjoining bike sheds. Lines of marked squad cars ranged outside the window. Diesel fumes mingled with the stink of autopsy, chemical spirits and blood.
One of the assistants leaned against the wall in the yard, smoking a cigarette. A grey curl waved in through the open window.
Theo Jansen stood near the exit looking at nothing through the glass. Tears in his eyes.
‘Sorry,’ Vos said. ‘I wanted to tell you myself.’
‘Why?’ Jansen shot back at him. ‘Do you think this makes us equal?’
Rosie Jansen’s body lay on a metal anatomy table in the centre of the small room. Her face was visible above the sheet. The gunshot wound had been cleaned up and covered with a bandage.
De Groot had set a team working on the murder overnight. More than had been allotted to the two Surinamese kids who tried to kill Jansen outside the courthouse. It was early. But still they ought to have more than this.
‘Not equal, no,’ Vos said.
The white beard was straggly, uncombed. Jansen seemed much older than he had the day before.
‘But we do connect. She was left next to my home. The doll in her arms. It’s like one I was sent when Anneliese went missing—’
‘I had nothing to do with that!’
‘I know. You told me and I believe you. But whoever this man is . . . these people . . . They want me in this case, Theo. They left some photos of my daughter with Rosie.’
Angry, baffled, Jansen said, ‘You’re telling me she had something to do with your kid’s murder now?’
‘I didn’t say that. Someone wants me to get hooked up in all this. I don’t know why. I wish none of it had ever happened. But it has.’ He shrugged. ‘Here we both are.’
Jansen walked to a chair by the door to the yard, sat down heavily. Laura Bakker asked him if he wanted something. A glass of water. Coffee. He shook his head. Vos had arranged secure transport back to prison.
‘How did they kill her?’ Jansen asked.
Vos took him through as much as they had.
‘She opened the door herself. That would be to someone she knew, wouldn’t it? Or invited in.’
‘Rosie didn’t live in fear,’ Jansen said. ‘She wasn’t scared of anyone. Why should she be? No one goes round killing your kids for God’s sake.’
He realized what he’d said. Shrugged. His eyes strayed to the silver table. Bakker called one of the morgue assistants. The man walked over and covered Rosie Jansen’s swollen dead face.
‘What kind of world is this?’ Jansen asked of no one in particular.
‘Had she had threats?’ Vos asked.
‘No.’ He leaned forward on his arms, stared at the ground. ‘I got a few in jail. Only to be expected. Rosie was just looking after things until I came out.’
‘Not a lot to work with,’ Vos said quietly.
‘Where is he?’ Jansen asked. ‘That Surinamese bastard. Jesus . . . Coming for me I can take. Expect. But not Rosie. Never . . .’
‘He’s still in Ostend. Went there yesterday morning. Private plane at the airport.’
Jansen sat upright, leaned against the wall, looked at him.
‘He’ll be back,’ Vos said. ‘When he does we’ll interview him.’
Silence.
‘We both know he’ll have an alibi we can’t break,’ Vos went on. ‘We know one of the kids is dead. It’s best we assume the second fell on his sword too. So we’ll need someone who’ll talk. Any ideas?’
‘I’ve spent the last two years in a cell thanks to that bastard Mulder. Why keep asking me these stupid questions?’
Vos nodded and said, ‘Because I have to.’
‘Going to let me out now?’
‘What do you think?’
‘Dammit! The judge said—’
‘It’s conditional,’ Laura Bakker interrupted. ‘If you read the judgement. Release on bail pending appeal. In the circumstances . . .’
Jansen glowered at her, then at Vos.
‘You’re on this case now? This is it? The team?’
‘We’re looking for the Prins girl,’ Vos said. ‘I wanted to tell you myself. I felt you were owed that. De Groot’s assembling a team. Mulder’s going to run it . . .’
The big hood jabbed a finger in his direction.
‘I want you. Not that clown. If he hadn’t put me in jail none of this would have happened.’
Vos frowned.
‘You can’t think that way, Theo. Keep asking yourself . . . what if? You’ll go crazy. I’m talking from experience. I’ve found you a single cell in Het Schouw. As close to deluxe as I can get.’
There were six tower blocks in the prison complex of Bijlmerbajes near the Amstel river. Jansen had spent two years in Demersluis, a unit reserved for dangerous prisoners.
‘Het Schouw’s a holiday camp next to your old place. It still has to be solitary,’ Vos added.
Jansen was back staring at the table.
‘And Rosie? When do I get to bury her?’
‘We’ll let you know. Are there relatives we can contact? Her mother . . .’
‘She left me years ago. I don’t even know where she went.’ Tears threatened his vision once more. ‘Why are you asking me this? You’ve got files. You know what I eat for breakfast. When I take a shit. Rosie was all I had.’
Vos checked his watch then asked, ‘Is there anything else?’
‘Can I make a couple of calls? Private? Friends. I need to talk to Michiel Lindeman too.’
‘The lawyer won’t get you out,’ Bakker chipped in.
‘Of course,’ Vos said. ‘There’s a pay phone in the corridor.’
‘And the toilet,’ Jansen added.
The phone and the washroom were a good walk away. Vos nodded at a young officer to deal with it. When Jansen was gone he spoke quietly to the lab technician working in the morgue and asked him to check some records.
Bakker stayed reading the files.
‘What do we do now?’ she asked.
He gave her a business card in a plastic evidence sleeve.
‘Those two boys of Menzo’s had this. The Poppenhuis aan de Prinsengracht. Derelict building. Whatever it was, it wasn’t a doll’s house.’
‘This is that gas explosion?’ she asked looking at the card.
‘Koeman’s out there taking a look. I want to see for myself.’
She didn’t move.
‘This is a picture of the Oortman house, isn’t it? Like the one you got on the first box with the doll in it?’
‘Seems to be,’ he agreed.
‘You can get that picture anywhere, Vos.’ She handed the sleeve back. ‘It’s just clip art. You pick it up off the web.’
‘Maybe.’
‘Chasing a missing kid? On the back of a business card? This . . .’ She nodded towards the silver doors of the morgue. ‘. . . is a murder. Jansen wants you to handle it. De Groot will agree if you ask him.’
‘I’m aware of that.’
She folded her arms. The home-made suit seemed to hang on her more badly than the previous day’s.
‘Laura, there’s nothing either of us can do for Theo Jansen’s daughter. Katja Prins could be alive. With a little luck maybe we could find her. If you’d rather stay here and play with a computer . . .’
‘I’ll get us transport then.’
Vos looked out of the window.
‘It’s not raining, is it?’
7
Ten minutes after Vos and Bakker left the station Frank de Groot wandered down to the ground floor. The morgue was almost deserted. Rosie Jansen’s body was back in refrigeration. The forensic assistant was head down in a computer.
No pathologist.
No officers.
No Theo Jansen.
He walked over to the assistant, a smart young woman, Dutch Muslim, a pink scarf around her head, music fizzing out of the tiny phones in her ears.
‘Where is everyone?’
She took out the phones and looked up from the screen. He had to repeat the question.
‘They all left.’
‘I can see that.’
She looked upstairs.
‘Management meeting about the two Surinamese kids who went for Theo Jansen. Seems there’s a link with that place on Prinsen where the bomb went off. They were there first.’
‘What link?’
‘I think,’ she said slowly, ‘that’s what they’re trying to work out. That nice new man went off somewhere.’
The House of Dolls Page 11