The House of Dolls

by Hewson, David

  Instead of going into the bar he went to the canal and chained his bike. The wrecked dinghy had gone into the hands of forensic who were slowly tearing it apart with little success. The team was finished with his boat, which had proved equally unyielding. Two uniformed men stood at the head of the steps. Vos talked to them, told them to go back to Marnixstraat.

  For ten minutes they walked Sam in silence along the Prinsengracht. Then they came back and sat beneath the poster of Casablanca: two beers, a couple of cold boiled eggs with salt on the side, two toasted cheese sandwiches, some ham and crisps. She looked at the plain, cheap food and shook her head.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Vos asked.

  ‘Do you ever eat in a restaurant?’

  ‘Why would I do that?’

  ‘For something . . . nice?’

  He picked up an egg, sprinkled some salt on it, took a big bite then said, ‘I suppose you got spoilt in Dokkum.’

  ‘Nah . . . Mostly we just scavenge and live off road kill.’

  Sam sat at his feet, staring up all the while, looking a bit baffled. Vos told her off for feeding him crisps.

  ‘Not good fora dog.’

  But the ham was OK so she gave him that. Then asked, ‘What do we know? Really?’

  The bar was empty but he looked round to make sure their conversation was private all the same.

  ‘We know Theo Jansen killed Menzo and his girlfriend. He thought they were responsible for Rosie’s death. To begin with anyway.’

  ‘Does he still believe that?’

  ‘Not after we talked.’

  ‘And that’s it? One word from Pieter Vos. That’s all it takes?’

  There was a brief, bright sparkle in his eyes.

  ‘Not really. I suspect Theo knew already. He’s an impetuous type. Angry. Violent. But an admirable man in some way . . .’

  ‘Admirable? He’s a murderer and a crook.’

  Vos nodded.

  ‘And lots more besides. But he has a kind of moral code. He’s an Amsterdammer. A practical man. He knows we’ll always have criminals. He just thinks they’re better home-grown.’

  He rolled up a piece of meat and passed it to the dog.

  ‘Menzo would never have murdered Rosie anyway.’

  ‘Why not?’ she asked.

  ‘You said it yourself this morning. Nothing to gain and lots to lose. It brings a different kind of blood into the equation. One that spills on everyone in the end. Menzo was no fool.’

  ‘You make it sound so logical.’

  The comment surprised him.

  ‘It is. We’re dealing with intelligent men here. Businessmen. It’s just that their business . . .’ He shook his head. ‘It’s the mirror image of ours. They liberate, in their own terms. While we try to tell people what they mustn’t do.’

  ‘We’re not in the wrong, Vos.’

  He shook his head.

  ‘Sometimes we are. Sometimes we overstep ourselves, like Wim Prins and his stupid scheme. Which is about nothing but power by the way—’

  ‘His daughter’s missing!’ she cried, too loud.

  Sofia Albers gave them a hard look from the bar.

  ‘His daughter’s missing,’ she said quietly, almost a whisper.

  ‘I’m aware of that,’ Vos said with a mournful shrug. ‘Do you think Menzo was responsible? Any more than he murdered Rosie Jansen? Or maybe someone employed by Theo, a man who was about to be released from a prison sentence he didn’t deserve?’

  She finished the beer.

  ‘Search me. Do you have no idea?’

  ‘None,’ he said immediately. ‘But we know what we don’t know. Which is a start.’

  There was something he wanted to say but didn’t.

  ‘What is it?’ she asked.

  ‘We need to look past the obvious,’ Vos said, and drained his own glass. ‘What if this apparent vendetta . . . it’s just manufactured?’

  His eyes grew unfocused, tired.

  ‘I honestly don’t know. Any reputation I’ve got is exaggerated and largely undeserved.’

  ‘Don’t tell Frank de Groot. He’s counting on you.’ She hesitated. ‘And so am I.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘An education,’ she said straight away.

  Something in that made him think. Vos got up and nodded then went to the bar, asked Sofia Albers to keep Sam for one more night and paid.

  He looked her in the eye, alert again.

  ‘If I took you off this case and sent you back to shuffle parking tickets in Marnixstraat tomorrow . . .’

  She screeched. The dog stared at the pair of them. So did the woman behind the bar.

  ‘If I did that . . .’ Vos repeated.

  ‘You can’t! They might as well fire me now.’

  ‘You could go home to Dokkum.’

  ‘I don’t want to! I want to be here.’ She stamped her boots on the wooden floor, one after the other. ‘Here.’

  ‘Fine. Then there’s something you need to see. In my boat,’ he said and without a word she followed him out into the night.

  30

  A narrow dead-end alley. Spikes on the windows. A sign in English above the entrance: NO SEX.

  At the canal end a single street lamp flickered erratically. A few foreign drunks lurking outside a bar in the main street. A couple smoking weed, arm in arm, as if they were on honeymoon. The big bulk of the old church lay round the corner. But this part of De Wallen was firmly in the grip of the red-light business. Cabins alive with fluorescent tubes, bodies writhing at the window. Dope cafes. Bars and cheap restaurants.

  And in Slaperssteeg . . . nothing.

  Anna de Vries walked the length of the grubby passageway, from the canal towards the dead end behind Warmoesstraat. Her head was spinning from the beer. She was hungry for some proper food. And tired. It was hard to think straight after a long and eventful day like this.

  She slung her bag more tightly over her shoulder, thought of the precious iPad in there. Muggings weren’t common in this part of De Wallen. But they weren’t unknown.

  Phone out, one more message.

  Anna writes, Katja? Where are you? I’m here. Where you said.

  She looked at the screen. Waited. Nothing. Then the letters faded, as if out of boredom.

  ‘Screw this,’ De Vries muttered. ‘I’m going home.’

  Someone had been jerking her around. That was for sure.

  Then it rang and the sound made her jump so much she nearly dropped the thing on the filthy cobbles.

  One short curse. She looked at the name there and answered.

  ‘It didn’t work out,’ she told the photographer. ‘Sorry.’ The inevitable question. ‘No. You don’t get paid. Nice try.’

  When she finished the call she heard footsteps. The street light flickered. She pulled back a step. A man was there, scaring the life out of her for a moment.

  Then De Vries saw his face, laughed with relief and said, ‘Jesus Christ. What are you doing here? I could have wet myself . . .’

  Thought about it.

  ‘Ah.’ Finger in the air. ‘So Katja called you too. Of course she would. I’m sorry. It makes sense . . .’

  She looked at him again. There were plastic bags on his hands. Plastic bags on his shoes.

  In the dark and narrow passageway of Slaperssteeg Anna de Vries shook her head. He held something in front of him and it glittered in the waxy yellow light.

  31

  The houseboat was neater than she remembered. And touching too, like a teenager’s room, plastered with posters, pairs of jeans and socks neatly folded in random piles. Forensic must have done some tidying up after they went through his things, finding nothing at all to suggest who broke in and played an old jazz CD on his stereo. And dumped a body next door, in a way that seemed designed to draw him back into Marnixstraat and a murder investigation.

  Bakker felt done in but she wasn’t looking to going home. The tiny studio apartment near Westermarkt was a dump, all she could afford. Some
of the neighbours stayed up late, playing music. Looked down on her because of the job, her Friesland accent. Because she wasn’t like one of them and never would be.

  But she wanted to know how this city worked. Wanted to learn. Pieter Vos seemed a good place to start.

  He was rummaging around in the bows where two large doors blocked off what looked like a storage area. Bakker went and joined him, helped clear a few pieces of old furniture out of the way as he tried to find something at the back.

  ‘I don’t remember it being like this,’ Vos said.

  ‘Like what? A mess?’

  He turned and looked at her.

  ‘I don’t remember it being this tidy.’ Then he shifted an old record player to one side and said, ‘Ah . . .’

  Bakker found she had to retreat a step or two, find a chair, sit down hard.

  The thing Pieter Vos had brought her to see was a doll’s house. A metre high, perhaps more. An exact copy of Petronella Oortman’s, down to the open rooms with their tiny furniture and miniature figures.

  ‘What’s this?’ she whispered, feeling a sudden chill in the hot, stuffy cabin.

  ‘Can you give me a hand? It’s quite heavy.’

  She squashed next to him in the bows, both jostling for grip on the dusty wooden walls of the miniature wooden house. Finally Vos managed to half-roll, half-bounce it sideways out of the storage area. She got her fingers under the roof and the two of them lifted it over the edge of the compartment out into the open cabin.

  ‘What is this?’ she asked again.

  ‘It’s Anneliese’s,’ he said, as if she should have guessed. ‘I had it made for her tenth birthday.’ He grinned. ‘She loved it for all of three weeks. Then it was kid’s stuff and she never looked at it again.’

  Vos brushed the dust from the roof with his elbow, peered inside.

  ‘I kept it when we broke up for some reason. I don’t know why.’ He shrugged. ‘You do that with dolls, don’t you?’

  Laura Bakker reached out and touched his sleeve for a moment.

  ‘Pieter. You should let it go.’

  ‘Why?’ he asked, puzzled. Bakker had no answer.

  ‘You see,’ he went on, ‘life’s like this. A series of rooms. You open one. You walk through.’ He poked around the ground floor with his fingers. Picked up the tiny doll from the floor, placed it on the minuscule wicker chair. ‘You always think you know what to expect. But sometimes you go through the next door and . . .’

  He rolled back his head and sighed.

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  Vos got up and walked to his briefcase.

  ‘You need to see this.’ He pulled an envelope out of the case. It had the stamp of forensic on it. ‘Don’t share it around. I want to try to understand . . .’

  There were two reports, each about DNA samples. One for Katja Prins. The second for Anneliese.

  Bakker read them. Then read them again. Put them down. Looked at him and said, ‘So that’s why the result came back so early this afternoon? From forensic in the Doll’s House? You’d already been asking.’

  He’d gone back to playing with the things in the doll’s house again, setting the table straight, the tiny figures back in their places.

  ‘Does it mean what I think?’ she asked.

  ‘Anneliese and Katja shared the same father,’ Vos said. ‘Wim Prins. Liesbeth worked for him when I first met her. She did lots of temp jobs over the years. For a while she was a volunteer in a legal advice centre he used to visit. I never . . .’

  He stopped for a moment, looking as if he didn’t want to continue.

  ‘We were so . . . happy. So normal. So . . . dull and boring and predictable I guess. At least I was.’

  ‘You asked for those records this afternoon. You must have thought—’

  ‘I never thought we were anything out of the ordinary. Just another family trying to do what was right. You lose everything in the end, don’t you? Everything . . . everyone you love. They’re taken from you, one way or another.’

  This was important. She understood that. Understood too that it puzzled Vos in ways he couldn’t quite fathom.

  ‘You must have wondered, Pieter,’ she repeated. ‘Otherwise why check?’

  Vos finished fixing the tiny rooms on the first floor.

  ‘I told you. One day you open a door knowing what’s behind it. Knowing. But really it’s just an illusion. A pack of lies. Everything is. Every last thing.’

  He set one more tiny shape upright on a chair.

  ‘And the worst part is . . . when you lie to yourself.’

  She waited, said nothing.

  ‘I worked and worked at Marnixstraat because I told myself that was what they paid me for.’ A shrug, the smile. ‘It wasn’t true. Not really. I was staying away from her. I guess I must have known something was wrong. I didn’t want to see it. Face it. I didn’t notice I was staying away from Anneliese as well.’

  He nodded, tried to make sure the words were right.

  ‘I lied to myself because it was easier that way. Maybe when Anneliese was older we’d have dealt with it. Maybe not.’ The quietest of laughs. ‘I’m not very grown up, am I? You wouldn’t play these games in Dokkum.’

  ‘People play those games everywhere. Don’t fool yourself. What are you going to do?’

  ‘I’ll talk to Liesbeth tomorrow. About the blood. About . . . Anneliese.’ He looked her in the eye. ‘This is between the two of us for now.’

  ‘You can’t keep that to yourself.’

  ‘I know. That’s why I told you.’

  She got up, shuffled her coat around her. Wanted some fresh air.

  ‘Van der Berg thinks you should stay clear of this,’ she said. ‘Maybe he’s right.’

  ‘Would Liesbeth thank me for that? I want to find Katja Prins. I want that more than anything.’

  ‘So you can ask her why your daughter . . . why Anneliese died in an Amsterdam brothel?’

  ‘She was my daughter,’ Vos insisted. ‘DNA’s got nothing to do with it. We brought her up. I’m her father. And I don’t know she’s dead. Not yet.’

  ‘Not if . . . Not if you say so.’

  Laura Bakker stopped. It was as if she wasn’t even there. Engrossed, obsessed, Vos had turned to the second floor, the main bedroom. He asked her to reach into his case and bring out a pair of forensic gloves. Then, with the stealth and care of a surgeon, he reached inside, lifted the tiny sheets, pulled something out from beneath the covers.

  Another photo. Two young girls, happy, healthy, smiling for the camera. Not in the Vondelpark this time. They were in front of a tall terraced house with tulle curtains in the windows.

  Anneliese and Katja Prins posing outside the privehuis called the Doll’s House. Before the bomb hit.

  ‘Forensic did a great job, didn’t they?’

  ‘Looks like it,’ Vos agreed.

  ‘Someone’s trying to tell you something, Pieter.’

  He nodded, looked at her, surprised perhaps.

  ‘True,’ Vos said. ‘But what?’

  32

  Anna de Vries looked. Couldn’t move.

  The thing in his hands was a knife. He must have been holding it low down as he stood there, grinning.

  It was a knife and it felt cold and cruel as the sharp point took her breath away.

  The phone slipped from her fingers and he didn’t seem to notice. He was too occupied with keeping the blade tight inside her, the force so hard and insistent she couldn’t even scream.

  De Wallen. The red-light district. Not a place to wander at night. She’d known that all along.

  And this was a mugging of a kind. Just by the last man in Amsterdam she’d have expected.

  PART THREE

  WEDNESDAY 19 APRIL

  1

  Jaap Zeeger walked into Marnixstraat just after eight in the morning, asked for ‘Mr Vos’, waited patiently in reception, hands on knees.

  They came down and took him into an interview room where Bakker turne
d on the recorder.

  ‘First time we’ve met and you haven’t cautioned me, Mr Vos,’ Zeeger said with a grin.

  Bakker had brought along the file. Zeeger was thirty-four. A string of minor convictions, mainly drug-related. Time in jail. Time in state drug treatment.

  Vos could scarcely believe it was the same man. Lean, with clean dark hair, a face that was pockmarked but more healthy than before. He looked ordinary. Not the sad, sick foot soldier he’d been when he was one of Jansen’s minions. Zeeger had a black leather jacket, black jeans, clean shiny shoes. He said he was working part-time for a courier service and was hoping for a full-time job there soon. He’d been away on holiday at a caravan camp in Texel. Got back the night before. Heard from Til Stamm the police had been looking for him.

  Now she’d gone to Texel, to the same caravan he used. One owned by the Yellow House, the rehab charity she’d mentioned and said she had nothing to do with.

  Bakker queried that. Zeeger bristled.

  ‘Til’s a nice girl. She wasn’t lying. They had the caravan going free so I asked. They said she could have it.’

  He took some gum out of the pocket of his jacket, popped it into his mouth.

  ‘Don’t smoke any more?’ Vos asked.

  ‘Gave it up. Gave up all that crap I got fed. And you know where I learned to use that shit? In jail. Where you lot put me.’

  ‘We’re terrible people sometimes,’ Vos agreed. ‘Where’s Katja?’

  ‘Dunno. I went off to Texel a week ago. She was still here. Seemed happy enough.’

  ‘What do you know about the privehuis on the Prinsen?’ Bakker asked. ‘The Doll’s House? Nice place for young girls.’

  He waved a skinny hand at her.

  ‘I never went there. All I did for Mr Jansen was run round his pot and pills and fetch a bit of money from time to time. He’d tell you that too if you lot hadn’t let him go. That brothel stuff wasn’t my thing. Besides . . .’